


Then Sings My Soul

by steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeb



Series: Deep Brain [2]
Category: Age of Ultron - Fandom, Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Dystonia, Everyone shows up at one point or another, F/M, Sequel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 13:04:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 25,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5049667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeb/pseuds/steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sequel to "Deep Brain."</p><p>The implants in his brain were doing their jobs: Clint was tremor-free for about a year now, and the rest of his life was equally as smooth.  He had a project to work on, his family welcomed a baby girl into the world only a few days ago, his oldest two were almost out of school for the summer.  Clint was feeling more sure of himself than he had in a long time.</p><p>Until all of it is taken away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Clint could probably continue sleeping for the next hundred years or so. He wouldn't mind; the back of his head was killing him, and the noise from the radio was loud enough that he couldn't hear it clearly but only enough to be irritating, like a conversation just out of earshot. The way he stretched across the rear bench seat of the truck was not exactly comfortable, and his knees were sore from keeping them bent. Man, he thought, I'm getting old.

The drive was pleasant enough. Not too rough, and the hum of the vehicle barreling down the freeway lulled him to sleep for quite a while, although he was not exactly sure of the time. Definitely later in the morning, or even early afternoon. They left so early that Clint was not awake enough to check the time. Between rising so early and the splitting headache festering behind his eyeballs, the lengthy nap was heavenly.

He didn't sit up, just kept his head down on a lumpy duffel bag for a pillow. Maybe if he laid still long enough he would go back to sleep for the remainder of the journey. Clint was certainly tired enough. His youngest child, at only ten days old, demanded a lot of attention compounded by his three other children and their needs. His third child, only a toddler, was obviously jealous of his new baby sister and suddenly wanted to be carried everywhere again. Trying to get anything accomplished with an angry eighteen-month-old demanding to be picked up was difficult, to say the least. And because of that, he was exhausted.

His nose was running again, but Clint didn't have anything to wipe his nose with so he tried to ignore the feeling. He could worry about it later, he guessed, when he had a little more room to move around. Hopefully they stopped soon, because Clint had to piss and he didn't have anything to eat since yesterday before he went to bed. Whenever they stopped, he could ask about food. There was probably a soda bottle somewhere in the cab of the truck if he looked for one. 

Clint closed his eyes again and listened to the drone of the freeway, the swish of other cars passing them by. Maybe it was because he spent so much time sleeping in trucks in the circus that he was able to doze in vehicles so easily as an adult. Who knows. Therapists would probably have a field day trying to figure it out.

After a quiet yawn, he settled back into the bench seat, tilting his head downward somewhat so the sun was not in his eyes. It shouldn't be much longer now until they reached their destination. The truck only had so much fuel.

He finally dozed off once again, thankful for the reprieve from the headache. Because he was asleep he didn't feel when they turned off the exit towards the destination. 

The second time he woke, he heard someone angrily yelling at him. "Goddamit, he got blood all over my bag. Fuck this guy." Clint didn't open his eyes at the comment, only opening them after the gruff man and his companion grabbed his shoulders and hauled him out of the truck. "I hope you kissed all your babies good night last night," the man sneered. "You're not leaving here alive."


	2. Eleven Days Before

_We don't need to go just yet,_ she said. _It's not time yet,_ she said.

"Seriously, after three other babies I figured you would automatically know when you're in labor," Clint whined as he weaved in and out of freeway traffic. Their chosen hospital was an hour away but at the speed he was driving they could make it in about 45 minutes as long as there were no accidents or construction to slow them down. Laura, pale and sweaty in the passenger seat, gripped the strap of her seatbelt and Clint's right hand to breathe through another contraction. "Just be patient, Allie, we're almost there. And tell mommy I need those fingers she's about to break."

Laura painfully grinned at him then groaned through the pain in her abdomen. She didn't feel the urge to push just yet so they were making good time; with the other three kids she labored for quite a while before they were born, with Cooper being the longest and Nathaniel taking the least amount of time. Over the past week Laura had felt false contractions off and on, so as she went to bed she assumed that what she was feeling was just another false one. Three hours later she was awake again, pacing the bedroom and debating waking Clint up to make the trip to the hospital. Doing so also meant waking up the neighbor to come and sit with the older kids until Natasha could load them up and bring them to the hospital in the morning. Clint woke when she groaned and sat on the bed, made the call to the neighbor, helped Laura get dressed, loaded up the SUV with the newborn carseat and their overnight bags, woke up Cooper to tell him where they would be, and somehow managed to make coffee all while running around as if he had just done speed. As soon as the neighbor pulled into their driveway, Clint shotgunned the SUV out to the freeway as fast as the backroads would allow.

A temporary reprieve from the contractions allowed Laura to drink some water and let go of Clint's cramping hand. She definitely wasn't new to labor but nothing about it was particularly easy. Sometimes Clint didn't help; in his eagerness to be there for her every step of the way sometimes Laura wanted to absolutely strangle him and then personally cut off his scrotum with a butter knife, but Laura appreciated the times he backed off and let her think herself through the pain. Clint was something of a golden retriever at times like this and was more excited than he let himself show, something Laura loved about her husband. Another contraction hit her just as Clint signaled the turn off the exit, turning right and somewhat speeding down the street toward the hospital. Since it was so late at night in the middle of the week the roads were not busy but Clint did not want to get stopped by any highway patrol or cop on the way, especially this close to their destination.

He called the hospital on the freeway so a nurse would meet them at the front of the emergency room entrance and take Laura up to labor and delivery. Clint pulled into the awning and got out to help Laura down from the SUV and into the wheelchair. "L&D is on the fourth floor," the nurse told him before he hopped in the car to park. With all their bags and the carseat in tow, he was too impatient for the elevator so Clint ran up each flight of steps until he reached the proper floor. A nurse at the check-in desk pointed to the room Laura was taken to.

She was already in a gown and sitting on the bed, another nurse wrapping a fetal heart monitor around her abdomen. The first time Clint heard Cooper's heart beat so fast right before he was born, Clint was afraid something was wrong. The doctor assured him that during labor all babies' heart rates are the highest they will ever be in their lives, and it was actually good that his little heart was beating so fast. Now listening to the racing heartbeat of his baby girl was better than any song Clint would hear in his life. He helped the nurse get Laura settled on the bed before arranging their belongings around the room. Before he could get too settled the nurse from the front desk came in to get more information so she could make their information bracelets they would need to scan to get in and out of the floor as needed. Clint kept all the bracelets he received when each kid was born, not only his own but the baby ankle bracelet and Laura's. 

With everything in its place and Laura as comfortable as she could be given the circumstances, they waited for the doctor to come in and check on her. Clint took the time to call her parents and let them know their newest grandbaby was on the way but he only got their voicemail. They'd see the message as soon as they woke, Clint wasn't worried. Laura spent the time rubbing and talking to her belly. "Are you ready to meet everyone, sweet-pea? I know it's cramped in there. I'm sorry your brother kept sitting on you, he's a jealous little guy."

Actually all three of the kids were somewhat jealous, but Nathaniel more so. Before Laura's belly was so round he was able to claim all of her lap space but eventually the new baby took up real estate and Nate became extremely needy. He knew there was some kind of change coming but wasn't sure what exactly. Nate knew that he was supposed to call Mommy's belly "baby" but had very little comprehension in terms of what that meant for his future. Lilah was probably the most excited since she would now have a girl to play with instead of rowdy boys all the time. Cooper, being a pre-teen, feigned disinterest. 

Clint perched himself in the guest chair that pulled out into a small bed, dragging it closer to Laura so he could hold her hand throughout subsequent contractions. She tried to eat a little to regain her strength, just some yogurt or peanut butter (her one craving this time around), and would've liked to take a nap if she could but the doctor came in just as Laura started to snooze.

"Hi, folks, how's everybody doing?" Their doctor delivered Nathaniel eighteen months ago and since Clint was an agent he _may_ have done extensive background checks on Dr. Alcorn. There was a possibility that Clint knew more about Laura's doctor than the doctor knew about herself. "Is she ready to go, Laura?"

"She's impatient like her sister," Clint yawned. "Wish she would've waited until a more reasonable hour to make her grand entrance though."

Dr. Alcorn pulled on her examination gloves and kicked a rolling stool toward the bed. " _Reasonable_ to her is whenever she feels like it. What's her name going to be?"

"Wanda Aliana," Laura mused as she took Clint's hand. "We're going to call her Allie."

"Well, you'll be calling her that sooner than you thought. Allie is ready to go."

\---

Two hours later, Clint paced the room with the tiniest bundle he'd ever held in his arms. Allie was by far the smallest of their babies, at least compared to Cooper's eight-plus pounds. He couldn't believe how tiny she was; her microscopic fingernails, tiny button nose, the little ears no bigger than the pad of Clint's thumb. "I'm afraid if I set you down, I won't be able to find you again, Little Girl."

Laura was relaxed with the bed tilted upwards so she could watch her husband wander around the room showing their daughter random objects, even though the baby was asleep and could only see about six inches in front of her nose. She was born just after midnight weighing six pounds, ten ounces, and only twenty inches long, and for the first 45 minutes after her birth Clint and Laura debated which of their other kids Allie looked like the most. So far, it looked as though Allie favored Nathaniel's nose but Lilah's mouth and chin. So far she had not kept her eyes open long enough to tell what her eyes would look like. Clint called the house to let their neighbor know she arrived and talked to Cooper for just a few minutes who promised he would go back to bed right after. He then called Natasha to let her know. 

Clint finished showing the sleeping baby all of the newborn outfits they brought and sat back in his seat once again, sliding down so he could lay the baby across his chest and under his chin. For a moment he laid her up on his shoulder but figured that the lump formed by the implants in his chest, the ones used to keep his brain from making him twitch and jerk constantly, would not be very comfortable to lay across so he set Allie closer to his sternum instead. He closed his eyes and tried to blink away the tears forming around them; Laura noticed and asked what was going on. 

"Nothing, honey. I'm just so happy I can actually hold her."


	3. Ten Days Before

Clint was not exactly a fan of the "dad bed" that hospitals supplied. He never seemed to fit. True, they'd improved tremendously since Cooper was born but by the time he woke up from Allie's early morning debut Clint was sore in random muscles all throughout his back and shoulders. Laura was already awake trying to coax the baby into eating.

"Sweet Pea, I know you're hungry but getting angry about it isn't helping," Laura whispered, inching her breast around the baby's cheek so she would latch. She looked up for just a moment to find Clint awake but not sitting up just yet. "Good morning, baby. You left the remotes in the bathroom last night."

He blinked in an effort to remember what exactly she was talking about. For about the first ten minutes whenever Clint was awake his cognitive processing power was always a few minutes behind. He sat up to rub his eyes and instantly remembered what Laura referred to when he had to chase his spasming hand around with his face to rub the sleep from his eyes. The remotes activated and deactivated the implants embedded underneath his collar bones that were connected to the center of his brain, controlling the misfiring neurons so his limbs did not twitch or jerk. At night he usually turned them off in an effort to prolong their battery life and typically he left the remotes on the side table next to the bed but the hospital cot didn't have one. Clint sat up and stretched his back, waiting for his foot to stop cramping before he stood and went to the side of the bed to kiss Laura. "She being a picky eater?"

"Nate will have to teach her how to eat like a mini-moose. Nat called, she said she's on her way with the kids so they should be here in less than an hour." The baby finally latched and nursed away with satisfaction. "There, see? That's not so hard. You find them, babe?"

Clint had already activated the left side, which he considered to be his "bad side," and was just about to activate the right. "Yeah, I got them." He set the little remote, no bigger than the cap of a pill bottle, against the lump in his shoulder and pressed the power button. There were a few quick motions he did with his hands to get his nerves and neurons in sync and to make sure the power was high enough, all of which he did in about thirty seconds. Clint then brushed his teeth and tried to make himself somewhat presentable. Newborns were easy while they were at the hospital-nurses would wake one of them up to remind Laura to feed the baby during the night-but Clint also hated hospitals with the passion of a thousand fiery suns.

Just as he finished washing his face, he heard the door to their room open and a group shuffling through. "Mommy!" That would be Lilah. She was probably the most excited about having a baby sister and Clint could hear her footsteps slapping against the tile as she ran to Laura's bed. Nate whined to be set down so he could walk about the room while Cooper stopped to look for Clint.

He exited the bathroom and shut off the light, snagging Cooper gently around the neck and tugging him into his shoulder. "Hey, bud, you see your sister yet?"

"No, I was looking for you. Aunt Nat said I have to make sure you hadn't run away yet from too many kids."

"Dammit, Nat, stop trying to turn my kids against me."

Natasha grinned from the other side of the bed and looked over Lilah's shoulder at the latest addition. "How'd everything go last night?" She ran a finger across the side of Allie's soft cheek and smiled when the baby stuck her tongue out, an automatic reflex indicating her tiny belly was full.

"Just fine. Clint caught her just like the other three. Right, daddy?"

"Yes, ma'am. There's my Nutter Butter, were you good in the car for Auntie Nat?" Nathaniel toddled over to Clint with his arms outstretched wanting to be picked up and snuggled. "Were you a good boy?"

"No," the little boy grinned. Nathaniel was in a phase where everything was answered with 'no' since that is what most adults told him multiple times per day. "Baby hurt?"

Clint furrowed his eyebrows. "What do you mean, bud? The baby's fine, she's not hurt,"

"Baby Owwie, hurt," Nate whined, pointing to the baby that Laura stretched out so her oldest siblings could see her. Lilah immediately began chattering away while the baby was awake, showing off her ponytail and talking about all the fun things they would do together when Allie was old enough.

Nat dropped herself onto Clint's cot and idly flipped through a magazine he was reading before he fell asleep the previous night. "He means Baby Allie, not Owwie."

Clint grinned and gently tugged Nate's head closer so he could kiss the side of the little boy's temple. A few days ago they took Nate for his first haircut so his once curly blond hair now settled in wisps across his scalp. Laura always dread the first haircut; it meant that her baby was growing up. Clint went as well and kept Nate on his lap the entire time; his own hair was still growing and the way he combed it in the morning covered much of the large scars left in his head from the implant surgery a year ago.

A knock on the door caused everyone in the room to turn around as if on cue. In the doorway stood Steve, a sheepish smile on his face, with Tony behind him. "Is this a bad time?" Laura waved them inside the room so the group did not block the hallway. Pepper, who stood off to the side of the doorframe and out of sight, also entered behind Steve with Tony's arm wrapped around her. Clint met Pepper a few times, and he showed her pictures of the kids, but most of those times Pepper was also dressed smartly in formal business attire. Today was the first day he'd seen her in anything casual. She also held a large party bag in her other hand, setting it on the floor next to Laura's rolling table.

"LadyHawk," Tony announced as though he were a ringleader. "This is Pepper. Pepper, LadyHawk. And the rest of the Nest is made up by all the fledglings."

Laura smiled warmly at Tony and held out her hand toward Pepper. "Normally people call me Laura. Clint's told me a little about you, and Mr. Stark talks about you. Good things, nothing to worry about." Pepper chuckled and wrapped her arms around Tony's bicep. 

"If he said anything bad about me I'd find out about it. Congratulations, by the way, she's beautiful."

Off to the side, in an attempt to be out of the way, Steve rested his hip against the back of the pull-out bed. "What's her name?"

Nathaniel pointed at the bed. "That Baby Owwie. I Nataniel Paytro." Steve openly laughed at the comment and looked back to Laura to translate toddler-speak, although much of what Nate said was pure gibberish with various inflections to sound like regular speech. When prompted he could usually repeat easy words of things he wanted, and there were a few picture books he would flip through and name the pictures, but independent words and phrases were very hit and miss. 

"Her name's Wanda Aliana. Allie."

The baby shifted and stretched as much as her little torso, and limited coordination, would allow. Based on her confused facial expression the act took quite a bit of effort; she scrunched her face and blinked at the soft light of the hospital room, and since she could only see a few inches in front of her face for the time being she could not make out the shadowy blobs talking to her. On her hands were small pink mittens to keep her from accidentally scratching her face and since she was getting her hospital picture taken later that day, Laura dressed Allie in a tiny lavender onesie-dress that was just a tad too big for her. Laura had to roll up the matching hat a few times so it would properly fit on her head. Like Nathaniel, since there was such a gap between the older kids and the younger ones they did not have any newborn outfits for a girl save for the few they kept from Lilah's birth.

Nate wriggled and whined once again, pointing to the diaper bag Natasha dropped on the floor next to Clint's mini-bed and partially covered by Steve's large feet. Steve looked downward at where Nate pointed and picked the bag up off the floor. "Is this what he wants?"

"Daddy, juice," the toddler whined. Laura mentioned that a sippy-cup was stuffed in a side pocket, and Steve tilted and spun the bag as though it were a puzzle until he found the pocket in question and tugged free a short plastic cup with handles on the sides. Nate toddled over and stood at Steve's knees with his arm up, using Steve's pant leg for leverage until he had his juice. Satisfied he spun around and walked in circles in a bouncy rhythm as if he were dancing.

"What do you say, Nutter Butter?"

Nate responded with the lip of the cup still in his mouth. "Take ooh, weh-come." Okay, they were still working on politeness with him. With three kids, and now a fourth, sometimes little things like having Nate say 'thank you' were missed. 

Bored with watching the baby do nothing but squint, Lilah slid off the side of the larger hospital bed and went over to the smaller dad-bed that Natasha occupied. After some shifting Lilah was able to weasel herself underneath Natasha's shoulder and kick off her shoes for some girl time. Cooper took her place and sat with his feet dangling off the side of the bed, petting the soft wrinkly skin of the baby's forehead with one finger. "She's tiny, mom."

Laura rubbed her son's back. "I know she is. She'll start packing on weight soon enough; remember how chunky Nate was by the time he turned one? All three of you did that, actually. You were my big boy, though."

Cooper ducked his head in embarrassment, his freckled cheeks dusted with a light red hue. He felt that he was getting to be grown up, so Mom being affectionate to him out in public made him blush. Secretly at home he still loved to be tucked in and snuggled, though. 

The adults continued discussing various recent events that Clint missed since he spent the past few weeks at home on paternity leave. Pepper let go of Tony's arm and moved closer to the bed to get a better look at the baby. Tiny baby fingers always amazed Pepper for some reason. Laura wrapped the baby loosely in her blanket and scooped her up, holding her out like a tiny offering. "Wanna hold her?"

Pepper didn't respond right away, she assumed Laura was asking Cooper. When it dawned on her Pepper immediately wound her arms around the baby's frame and pulled her close to her chest. "Oh my goodness, look at you, sweet girl. Clint, she looks just like you."

"Pep, she's only like twelve hours old," Tony jeered. "Don't insult her like that."

"Oh, you stop." Pepper walked her back over to Tony so he could get a better look, although Tony regarded most beings under four feet tall with suspicion. Babies just seemed too fragile and Tony couldn't figure them out like he could a robot or a computer or an engine. Pepper, however, loved babies and holding a newborn always made her extremely maternal for a few hours afterward. Being the CEO of one of the top companies in the world made Pepper weary of bringing a child into the mess that was her and Tony's life, however. 

Allie yawned and squeaked, then began squirming somewhat. She worked herself up enough that she let out a quiet, shrill cry that made Pepper smile even though the baby was somewhat upset. Tony immediately laughed.

"Oh my God, she sounds like that little Disney robot, the one that goes out into space after the Earth is trashy?" The baby continued to voice her disapproval at being away from mom; this new person did not smell like mommy at all. Lilah popped her head up like a small chipmunk at the mention of Disney.

"You mean, _Wall-E_ , Mr. Tony?"

"That's it. Wall-E." Tony peered over Pepper's shoulder at the wriggly baby and her scrunched face, her little tongue curling from the effort of letting everyone know she was unhappy. "Wait, Wanda Aliana, right? So Wa-li?"

Clint came around Pepper's other side to take the baby back, the realization making him stop mid-pass. "Tony, no."

"Tony, yes. Congratulations, kiddo," Tony beamed. "Your nickname is _Wali._ "


	4. Seven Days Before

Clint opened one of his eyes, groaning at the ungodly hour his daughter woke. Immediately the light on the other side of the room clicked on and Laura sat up to quiet the baby before she woke up any of her siblings. The first night Allie was home she managed to wake both Lilah and Cooper only a short while after Clint managed to get them into bed. "Shh, mommy's here, I know you're hungry," whispered Laura into the little co-sleeper next to the bed. Clint thought it was actually a cool contraption; it was the same size as a regular bassinet but one of the longer sides was missing so the baby's mattress was flush with their own. Laura was skeptical of using it at first, since the other three kids were all in regular bassinets, but after two nights of merely rolling over and the baby being within arms reach and Laura was sold. Whoever invented it deserved a Nobel prize.

Laura set the baby between them to get ready to nurse her. Clint sat up with his back against the headboard; he usually woke up with his wife for the first few weeks at home with a new baby. He figured if Laura had to shoulder the burden of nursing then he might as well get up for whatever she might need. Some nights he was only awake for about five minutes but that was usually when he just came back from a mission and was therefore exhausted. Otherwise he usually laid next to her and lovingly annoyed her. Since he turned off his implants at night the most he could do with his curled hand was lay it on the baby's belly and pat her as best he could. "That time again, Allie-baba?"

"You know, I think I like 'Wally' better than 'Allie-baba.'"

"Nope, I refuse. Stark isn't naming any of my children," Clint whined. His constant twitching caused the mattress to minutely shake every other second or so and he grunted about as often as the baby as she nursed. She seemed less confused and squinted far less often than she did at the hospital so Clint and Laura could now see her deep blue eyes. Most likely they would turn either brown or lighter blue like the other three kids but it would be a few weeks until that happened.

Laura laughed and stroked the fine hairs on the baby's head. "Nate was calling her 'Wally' earlier today as he was going down for a nap."

"Oh yeah? Well he also asked why she had 'no pee-pee' and wanted to call her Watermelon before she was born."

"He's a creative monster," Laura grinned. He was creative in the sense that he was entirely destructive if left to his own devices. A few weeks ago Lilah gave him a handful of crayons to keep him occupied while Laura was cooking; within five minutes what crayons weren't broken Nate used to scribble all over the tray of his highchair. As much as Clint tried he still could not get the crayon marks out of the plastic. Just as Laura set the baby up on her shoulder to burp her, a light _thunk_ came from downstairs followed by the hallway light clicking on. A few moments later Wanda appeared in the doorway, ruffling a few light snowflakes from her hair.

"Good morning," Wanda whispered so she did not wake up any kids down the hall. "I am sorry it is early, I saw your light on and I wanted to make breakfast so I thought I should start early. Lilah wanted I make _burek._ "

As Laura gently bounced the baby and patted her back, Clint leaned against Laura's pillow and made faces at her. "You don't have to do that, kid. We were just going to set out cereal or something, let them fix it themselves."

"It is alright, I wanted to make it. I have not eat it for a long time." _Burek_ , at least to Clint, appeared to be something like cheese baklava that could be eaten any time of the day but Wanda usually made it in the morning so the kids could take some to school. It was very filling, especially for colder mornings like today. Even though the snow was light enough that it would not stick, even the smallest amount meant watching the news until the moment school began to see if the district called off school. Wanda moved to head back downstairs but stopped for just a moment. "Allie is very happy this morning."

A second later Allie let out a _blurp_ as all the gas in her belly escaped. "I'd say she is after that one. Good job, baby girl." With Wanda moving back downstairs, Laura set the baby next to Clint and stood to go to the bathroom. He curled around the baby's tiny frame and kissed her chubby cheek, bopping her tongue as carefully as he could when she stuck it out to show she was full. "Put that back in there, Allie-baba. Or are you trying to give daddy kisses? I bet that's it."

"Would you mind getting the kids up for breakfast? I'm going to watch the news to make sure school isn't cancelled," Laura called from the bathroom. Clint sat up and fumbled with the remotes on the side table next to the bed, trying to get his left hand to uncurl and his right to just behave and do what he wanted it to do so he could press the power button. After listening to him curse for a moment Laura stuck her head out of the bathroom once again. "Need some help, baby?"

Clint nodded and dropped the remote onto the bed as the baby worked on wriggling out of her blanket. Her movements were still jerky and uncoordinated, much like Clint's when the implants were turned off, but as her eyes cleared they were more concentrated on things she wanted to look at. Laura came around the bed and picked up the remote, feeling around Clint's chest for the lump to set the remote against under his collar bone. She pressed the power button and tossed it back on the side table as she waited for Clint to go through the short routine to get his neurons back in sync. Before she turned around he grabbed her hand and pulled her back down to his level, kissing her deeply. He'd love to pull her down further and roll on top of her for a quickie before getting the kids up but her OB/GYN made him wait at least six weeks until they could have sex again. His "punishment" for getting her pregnant, the doctor had said. "Good morning, Mrs. Barton."

She laughed against his lips and laid her free hand against his jaw. "Good morning, Mr. Barton."

They parted ways, Clint activating the other implant and Laura scooping the baby up to take downstairs for either blanket time or bouncer time. Sometimes whenever Laura was cooking she would set whichever kid was small enough at the time in a little stationary bouncer and set that on the counter or the kitchen table. It never bounced hard enough to scoot so Laura could do what she needed to do and keep the baby close at hand. Clint went down the hallway to Cooper's room and knocked on the door, ducking in after a moment and going to his son's bedside. After kissing Cooper's forehead he sat on the bed and gently shook the little boy's shoulder. 

"Hey, Coop, alarm goes off I need you out of bed, okay? Wanda is making breakfast this morning."

Cooper groaned and blinked at the outline of his dad in the darkness. He grunted his affirmation and promptly turned back over to his other side for a quick snooze before the alarm went off. Satisfied, Clint went back out to the hallway (leaving the door open so Cooper couldn't get too comfortable) and knocked on Lilah's door. Lilah was definitely a morning person so getting her up and out of bed was never an issue unless she was sick. Cooper was usually the one Clint had to nag until he was out of bed. In Lilah's room Clint kissed her forehead as well but instead of only sitting on the bed he lay prone so he could cuddle with her for just a moment until she was fully awake. To wake her up faster he tickled her chin and pretended to chew on her arm in an over-the-top manner so she would giggle and wriggle around the bed.

"Hi, daddy," she laughed while trying to block Clint's hands from tickling her.

"Good morning, baby. Wanda's making breakfast this morning, so you might wanna get up and get moving before me and Coop eat it all." Lila's face lit up as if Clint flipped a switch and she scrambled from underneath the covers, sitting on Clint's hip and sliding down onto the floor. When Natasha wasn't at the farm, Lilah was attached to Wanda to the point that Clint or Laura had to give Lilah a chore or something so Wanda could have some space. The little girl darted down the hall just as Cooper's alarm clark went off and Clint listened to make sure Cooper actually got out of bed. They met in the hallway as Cooper rubbed his eyes and sauntered down the steps in his pajamas and messy bed-head. Clint then went to the nursery to get Nathaniel; since Nate did not have to go to school or be dressed for a while Clint merely picked him up from the crib and slowly went down the steps with Nate dozing and drooling on Clint's shoulder. As they got to the last step Nate yawned and stuck his head up, rubbing at his eyes and looking around to figure out where exactly he was.

"Mommy?"

Laura moved away from the coffee pot to Clint's side, stroking the back of Nathaniel's head. "Hi, baby boy, did you sleep good?" Nate turned and stretched his arms out for Laura to hold him but she already had Allie in one hand and a coffee cup in the other. "Sorry, sweetie, mommy's only got two hands."

"Baby Wally?"

"She's right here, you wanna give her kisses? Say 'good morning, Allie.'" Laura held the baby up a little higher so Nate could lean down and kiss whatever he could reach. Since they brought the baby home Nate would ask to hold her or wanted to hug her but he also had a habit of squishing her face or hugging too tight. Nate would also hold her for about fifteen seconds before he held up his hands and said "all done!" Apart from saying 'be gentle' multiple times, letting Nate hold the baby nearly induced a heart attack for Clint.

Clint set Nate in the highchair and snapped the tray into place as Wanda pulled a tray out of the oven. The entire kitchen smelled of filo dough and cheese, as well as coffee Wanda made over the stove. Since Laura was nursing she could only drink a small amount of decaf from the drip machine; the coffee Wanda made was stronger than average coffee in only half the size. Clint liked it, but he liked it _горка_ \--without anything added whatsoever so it was extremely bitter and kept him awake for about three weeks straight. Wanda liked hers to be sweeter, but not as sweet as Pietro. At least, the way Pietro _used_ to drink it. Before he died.

Thinking about her brother made Wanda face away from the family to quickly dab at the tears forming around her eyes. It took her a few weeks to get used to Nathaniel's middle name being Pietro, but as soon as that pain went away she always felt like something else stepped in to take its place and remind her of her brother or of Sokovia. She missed her home, Wanda was not afraid to admit it. 

With the tray out of the oven she began cutting the burek into small squares. For Nate she mashed his into even smaller pieces that he could eat with his fingers. He was still learning to use a fork and a spoon, and sometimes he did alright if what he was eating was sticky enough. Otherwise he typically made a mess. Wanda set his plate on the tray and kissed his forehead. "Добро јутро, Душо моја."

Nate squished some of his burek between his fingers. " _Dobwo eew-tro,_ he yawned back. Since Wanda usually spoke Sokovian to him he picked up a few words here and there, although his pronunciation was off. Wanda assured Clint that his pronunciation was fine for being only eighteen months old. Hell, he was still working on English let alone a second language.

They ate in relative quiet until Laura noted that school was _not_ cancelled which caused both of the older kids to whine. Allie was content to swing back and forth in her little rocker machine that swung her side to side until she eventually drifted off to sleep once again. For the first eight weeks of her life she would spend more time asleep than awake so Laura was just fine leaving her in the swing or in her bouncer to nap all day. It freed up her hands to do other things, and Clint was home so he usually took care of diaper changes. Collectively Allie was awake for only a few hours during the day and a lot of the time she spent on Clint's lap or his stomach. Whenever Clint sat her up her big round head fell forward since she did not have much strength in her neck muscles yet, so Clint would hold her head up and give her funny voices or gently dance her around to keep her entertained. Nathaniel found this to be hilarious whenever daddy did it.

As soon as Lilah finished eating Laura sent her upstairs to get ready for school. Cooper, not much of a morning eater, managed to eat about half of his plate before he declared he was finished and got up to get dressed. Laura put what he didn't eat into a plastic bag so he could eat it on the bus if he wanted, got their backpacks situated and made sure homework was in the right place, pulled their jackets out of the closet, sent Lilah back upstairs to brush her teeth, then helped Clint look for the keys to the SUV. Since it was still frigid outside this early in the morning he would drive them to the bus stop and wait with them in the heated car until the bus came. It was their daily routine, and adding Nathaniel and Allie disrupted very little since they were not in school yet. They considered putting Nathaniel in daycare but the expense and the fact that Laura was usually home nixed that idea. 

The SUV warmed outside as Cooper and Lilah scrambled into coats and gloves and hats before they missed the bus. Clint didn't mind taking them to school but the bus drove past them anyway so it was silly to drive all the way to the school if they could ride on a bus going to the same destination. In the car they drove the half-mile from the driveway to the bus stop; sometimes one of Cooper or Lilah's friends sat in the car with them if their parents were in a hurry but today they were on their own. As soon as the bus turned onto their street Clint unlocked the doors and rubbed the back of Cooper's neck. "Have a good day today, bud."

Cooper jumped out of the front seat while Lilah fumbled her way to the front to take his place. "Bye, daddy," she said as Clint kissed her cheek. Lilah then stopped and tapped the top of Clint's head. "Daddy dents?" Clint bent his head lower so Lilah could kiss the scar on the top of his head that remained from the implant surgery a year ago. She started calling his scar 'dents' when she felt the impression the small plastic caps screwed into his skull left on his scalp. 

"Bye, baby girl. See you after school."


	5. Three Days Before

They were having a lazy day today, at least the kids were. Clint spent most of the day gathering laundry that littered the house and finding all the little hiding places Nathaniel put his clothes. Ever since the toddler figured out how to undress himself he frequently did so at strange hours of the day or whenever company showed, and he also knew how the small straps on his diaper worked so if no one else stopped him Nate turned into the tiniest streaker. A lot of his missing clothes Clint found stuffed behind the crib.

Laura was busy giving both the little kids a bath in the large kitchen sink with Nate sitting in the larger side and Allie in a plastic tub on the other. None of the bathrooms had a removable nozzle so instead of using cups to rinse the kids heads of shampoo Laura could use the hose attached to the sink. Doing so lead to fewer tears, messy floors, and sore backs compared to bathing the older kids when they were smaller. Nate had taken baths in the regular tub before, and once Clint even held him while they both took a quick shower because they were running late for some function at the kids' school, but Nate did not appear to mind the sink. He sat in a few inches of water so he could play with some rubber ducks but not enough for him to make a huge mess. He held up one of his ducks to the smaller side of the sink and set it on the rim of Allie's tub.

"Baby Wally want ducky."

"Aww, thank you for sharing, Nate," Laura cooed as she scrubbed Nate's back. Allie had no idea what the rubber duck was and no way to make herself grab the toy yet but she was now able to follow most things about two feet from her eyes so she could see the duck. She tried squeaking at it but the rubber duck did nothing. As Nate stood so Laura could scrub his legs, he pointed to Allie once again.

"Mommy, Baby Wally broke."

Laura looked over to Allie, who was busy staring at the shiny long arm of the faucet. "What do you mean, baby? She's not broke."

Nate pointed at her again as if doing so would emphasize his concern. "Where her tinkie?"

A few seconds passed before Laura understand what Nate was asking. Clint walked into the kitchen with a large load of laundry that came straight from the dryer, which he set on the table to dig through and sort. "Clint, your son wants to know about anatomy."

"Anatomy," Clint repeated, concentrated on matching socks. He was grateful that not only were the older kids feet different sizes but that Lilah preferred wearing character socks or brightly colored socks, it certainly made sorting through them easier. 

"He wants to know about the difference between boys and girls."

Clint stopped mid-fold and looked at Laura's mischievous grin and Nate's expectant face. He dropped the shirt he was folding back into the laundry basket and grabbed a warm towel instead to wrap Nate in since he was finished with his bath. This wasn't the first time they'd had to talk about such information with the kids, they did the same with Cooper and Lilah after she was born, but it was still an awkward subject. Laura read a few parenting blogs that brought up the topic occasionally, but she hated the way people used cutesy words with their kids. Where Nate picked up 'tinkie' was anyone's guess. Probably Laura's parents, actually. Clint pulled the stopper from the sink so the water could drain and wrapped the towel around Nate's shoulders to dry him. "She doesn't have one, bud. Allie has a vagina, like mommy. You have a penis, like daddy."

Nate looked at himself once again and then back to Allie trying to catalogue the new information. He had a vague understanding of 'boy' and 'girl' but at such a young age he did not know much more beyond that. Clint's answer appeared to satisfy Nate, and as he stood the little boy on the table to finish drying him Nate turned his attention to the laundry basket instead. With a new diaper on, Clint wrestled with Nate to get him to sit still long enough to wrangle him into a small pair of pants and a shirt. Most likely in about an hour Nate would remove both but at least for that next hour he would be warm. Clint then tossed a second towel onto the counter next to Allie's plastic tub for when Laura finished with her bath. All three of the older kids hated baths as newborns but Allie did not seem to mind, and the rubber duck kept her attention throughout. The only time she ever appeared to be upset was when Laura scrubbed her face, but as soon as her face was rinsed the bath was over and Laura set her on the towel while it was still warm. "Wally, are you a hungry girl? Did bath time make you hungry, Sweet Pea?"

Laura quickly diapered her and went to the couch in the den to nurse her. Lilah came in once to look for her jump rope and proceeded outside to play on the porch away from the noisy boys, who were busy building things with the larger Duplo blocks. Cooper loved Legos, but since Nate liked to eat random objects Clint made Cooper keep the Legos in his room and out of Nate's hands. The Duplo blocks were basically giant Legos, and both Nate and Cooper enjoyed building tall structures to knock over with other toys. They both sat on the floor in the den with the blocks spread around them, Nate merely stacking them in no apparent order and Cooper building some kind of train.

Outside, Lilah sang to herself as she skipped her rope up and down the length of the porch. She did not like playing jump rope in her snow boots and thicker coat, but sometimes Lilah felt that she wanted to play alone and the porch was the furthest she could go without someone being with her. And she was good at jump rope and double-dutch, something Cooper was clueless about, and practicing made her feel good. On the fourth turn around the porch, however, she stopped as two men stood in front of the steps in suits and ties, carrying brown-leather books.

"Hi," she whispered. There were plenty of people coming and going from the farm on a weekly basis, but these two men were entirely new to her.

"Hi there," the taller man smiled. One of his teeth was missing, which seemed strange compared to the pristine suit. "Is this the Hermann residence, by any chance?"

Lilah shook her head and shyly dragged the fabric of her jump rope across the wooden boards. "Our last name is Barton."

The shorter man pulled out a small map of the area and made a note on the house's location. "Hmm, maybe our map is old. It says the Hermann's live here."

"That was my mommy's last name before she married my daddy. Now it's Barton."

Both men nodded then snapped their attention to the front door as Clint stepped outside, a scowl on his face. He dd not like random people showing up at his front door (unless, Laura often jokes, that person was Lilah's age and had Girl Scout cookies), but he especially did not like random people talking to his daughter. "Can I help you?"

The taller man turned his leather book around to the front cover so Clint could see it. "Hello, we are with the Seventh-Day Adventists and we were looking for the Hermann house but it seems we took a wrong turn somewhere."

Clint pointed off to the right where the road began to curve. "They're about a mile down if you follow this road out. Little one story house, can't miss it."

Both men smiled and waved at Clint and Lilah. "Thank you for the directions. God bless you." They both turned together and walked back down the pathway leading to the road as Clint motioned for Lilah to come into the foyer with him. 

"Next time strangers come to the house, come get me, alright?" Lilah's lip quivered, afraid that she did something wrong. "You're not in trouble, honey, it's okay. Just come get me or mommy next time." The little girl nodded and shrugged herself out of her coat and boots, dropping each into the closet along with her jump rope. Her little red face showed her embarrassment, though she could not say exactly _why_ she felt embarrassed, just that she did. She went back into the den and dropped herself on the couch to curl into Laura's side and hide for a few moments.

"What's the matter, sweetie?" Laura rubbed her daughter's shoulder and stroked her hair to comfort her. Lilah only shrugged her shoulders. "Clint, what happened outside?"

"Nothing, just told Lilah to tell me if strangers come to the door again. She's not in trouble or anything, I don't know why she's pouting."

Laura squeezed Lilah's shoulder just a bit tighter but let the issue drop. Laura had both her girls with her, watching both her boys roll around on the floor. It might have been a lazy day, but Laura couldn't complain. With the baby asleep once again Laura stood to place her in the rocker and get lunch started, Lilah trailing behind her. "Want to pick what we eat for lunch, honey?" The little girl nodded and used both hands to tug the refrigerator door open. They needed to go to the grocery but with the new baby being home neither Clint nor Laura had the time to make the trip into town. Most likely Clint would go in the middle of the night sometime during the week; it took less time to go without the kids and sometimes the amount of people in a grocery store during the day overwhelmed Clint.

After the refrigerator did not turn up anything appetizing, Lilah went to the pantry and pulled out a can of Spaghettio's. It was not the healthiest choice so Laura did not buy it often, but with the chilly day and Lilah's mood a can of one of her favorites wouldn't hurt. Cooper wouldn't mind eating it, and Nathaniel ate just about anything placed in front of him as if he were a tiny vacuum. The only issue was the mess, but Laura could dig out Nate's little apron that caught any food he might drop and kept him from getting too messy. "How about that, plus some peanut butter sandwiches and carrots?"

Lilah curled her nose up at the carrots; of the Barton kids she was the pickiest eater, and for about a year her pediatrician had her drink supplement shakes to keep her from losing weight. Now Lilah was where she needed to be in terms of weight but during that time meals were always stressful for the family. They never did figure out what made her so picky, but Clint suspected that Cooper told her stories about bugs or some other gross substance being in her food to scare her. Lilah improved in the range of food she would eat, but they still had the occasional spat at dinner.

With the Spaghettio's simmering on the stove, Laura rummaged through the drawers for Nate's mess-apron while Lilah attempted to make her own sandwich. She was learning to use a butter knife but she needed practice to not mash whatever she was trying to spread too hard and leave giant holes in the bread. Butter was not much of a problem, except when she used too much, but sometimes peanut butter was too thick for her to spread easily. In the other room, Laura could hear Allie's hiccuping cry start up and both Cooper and Clint admonishing Nate for something.

Clint came in with Allie tucked in one arm like a football and carrying Nate by his waist in the other arm. "What happened," Laura asked and took Nate from him.

"Nate wanted to give her one of his cars and he dropped it on her, she's okay. She just needs her daddy, right, Allie-baba?"

As Cooper and Lilah took their place at the table, they both scrunched their faces at hearing Clint's nickname for the baby. "I like 'Wally' better, Allie-baba just sounds stupid," Cooper complained. For the comment Clint nabbed Cooper's sandwich and took a huge bite out of it, replacing it with a new sandwich a moment later. Laura was too busy getting Nate situated in the high chair to pay attention to Clint being childish. With Nate covered by his apron and his tray snapped into place, she tugged the highchair closer to the table so they could eat together as a family. Clint kept Allie tucked in the crook of his arm, wrapped in her soft lavender blanket. Just as Clint sat down, Cooper popped his head up. "Hey, dad-"

"Finish chewing first." Coop quickly chewed whatever was in his mouth and set his spoon down. "Continue."

"I need a board for my science fair project, the kind that have the two sides that fold in?"

"A trifold?"

Cooper nodded. "Yeah, that thing. I want to make it about Kermit, Jr." Unfortunately Cooper's first frog (Kermit) died a few weeks after Nathaniel's first birthday from red-leg, a common disease in pet frogs. Poor Cooper was devastated, and Clint hated having to dig a hole in the flowerbed to bury Cooper's frog broke his heart. They had a little funeral for Kermit after Cooper put him in the same little bucket in which Kermit was caught and set him in the flowerbed. Cooper cried off and on for about two days, and then spent the next week in something of a mopey haze, but by the time school started up again Coop was back to himself.

"I'll pick one up when I go to the grocery this week. What day do you need it?"

"Umm...Wednesday? I just have to bring it, we're working on our projects at school." Clint nodded and made a note to write it on the list hanging on the refrigerator. Allie squirmed in his arm and squeaked like a tiny mouse to voice her discomfort at not being cuddled enough, and Clint wrapped her tighter in her blanket.

"Allie, I think we need a nap after lunch. What do you think, Nutter Butter?"

Nate already managed to get Spaghettio's sauce smeared on his face and was munching on a baby carrot. "No!" Since Nate answered just about everything with 'no' it was difficult to determine what he meant at times. Clint nodded anyway; regardless of how Nate answered, he always had a nap after lunch anyway.

When they had the table cleared Laura carried a rapidly fading Nathaniel up the steps with Clint following, Allie still tucked in his arm. He laid her in the co-sleeper and laid himself in Laura's typical spot next to her as she placed Nathaniel in the middle of the bed next to him. If Clint had a particularly bad night or had a dystonic storm in the middle of the night or before he could activate his implants, he was often tired throughout the day until he had a nap himself. Nathaniel yawned once and tucked himself under Clint's arm, drifting off a few minutes later.


	6. The Day Of

Clint's attention remained on stacking the cans he got from the grocery into the pantry when Laura came down the steps with an unhappy toddler. Kids, as an unspoken rule, were required to share every germ known to mankind apparently so the head cold Lilah just got over transferred to Nate sometime during the day yesterday and progressively worsened. "Did you get the Baby Tylenol?"

He spun around on his heel and poked through some of the grocery bags. It was about four in the morning or so and right around the time Clint left for the grocery two hours ago, Nate threw up in his crib and his fever spiked. Laura used the last of their Baby Tylenol supply and asked that Clint pick up more at the grocery. He found the little box buried in a bag of non-perishables, somewhat squished underneath a few cans of fruit. "Hope you like cherry, Nutter Butter."

Nate stretched out his arms in Clint's direction. "Daddy?" The little boy's red cheeks were still warm and before Clint took him from Laura he placed the back of his hand on Nate's forehead. Just by feel the temperature Nate ran went down while Clint was gone but the thermometer would be more accurate. 

"My poor little guy, are you feeling bad?" Nate immediately laid his head on Clint's shoulder and whined some unintelligible response. Babies and toddlers normally had warm body temperatures but Nate sweat through his little pajama shirt, however they could not take it off him since he would then be too cold. Clint turned back to the freezer and shifted items around until he found a new box of popsicles hidden in the back. They had to hide the box because Cooper could now reach the freezer and could eat the entire box if no one noticed. "Here, buddy, will this help?"

He struggled opening up a grape popsicle until Laura took it and opened it for him. She was agitated, and Clint didn't blame her. She already had to get up every two or three hours to nurse the baby, but Nate kept her awake since about ten o'clock. Both of them were exhausted, Laura was worried about her baby boy and her newborn getting sick as well, and they _needed_ groceries desperately so Clint was not there to help her. After opening the wrapper she dragged herself right back up the steps to sleep what little she could before the next feeding time, then beginning the older kids' morning routine.

Clint remained at the table with Nate on his lap, surrounded by grocery bags. Luckily he put all the cold and frozen foods away so he was not in a rush to sort through the remainder. In the rush of having a newborn Clint missed spending individual time with his other kids, and he felt somewhat guilty that it took illness to make him stop and have one-on-one time with Nathaniel. Nate had a few growing pains and was not used to being considered the 'baby' anymore, and he was obviously jealous that people paid more attention to the new baby. He liked the quiet of being down in the kitchen while everyone was asleep, the only noise being the popsicle wrapper and creak of the chair as Clint gently rocked side to side. Nate intently sucked on the popsicle, and every so often he looked up to show Clint the purple juice around his lips. 

"Nate, are you daddy's little boy? You're mommy and daddy's baby boy, that's right. And mommy and daddy love you so much," Clint soothingly whispered against the top of Nate's head. He didn't expect a response but hoped that his quiet voice would lull Nate back to sleep. Either he or Laura would call the pediatrician in the morning for an emergency appointment if Nate's fever didn't break by the time the older kids went to school; based on the way Nate tugged on his right ear Clint suspected that his head cold was actually an ear infection. 

Because Nate was so sluggish, the popsicle started to melt faster than Nate could eat it. Clint felt a few drops of juice land on his arm and he immediately licked the juice off before it could fall on the floor and attract ants. He tugged a paper towel from the dispenser and tucked it under Nate's chin to catch the remainder. "You're going to be a sticky mess by the time you're done with that, aren't you, baby boy?" Nate looked up at Clint and stuck the popsicle in his daddy's face to share. Clint bit through half of it so Nate could finish the rest quicker and with less mess, but by the time Nate got to the end he was already starting to doze. "I know you're tired, baby. Poor thing," Clint continued to whisper.

Before Nate dropped the last of his popsicle, Clint stood with Nate snoozing on his shoulder to toss the last remaining bit in the trash. As he stood he noticed the grocery list on the refrigerator and quietly cursed himself: he forgot Cooper's trifold board, the one he needed _today_. Clint would have to go back out and get it. Goddammit.

He used the dry-erase marker to scribble a quick note as to where he would be when the rest of the family woke and that he would probably have to drop the board of at the kids' school. Clint quickly went up the steps as quiet as he could so he would not wake anyone and into his and Laura's bedroom. On the ground was the cot they brought out whenever one of the kids was sick and wanted to be with mommy and daddy, and Clint gently deposited Nate on it. The little boy squirmed at not being held for a moment but quieted soon after. Even in the low light of the room Clint could see Nate's puffy exhausted eyelids.

Clint's SUV keys were supposed to hang on a rack in the kitchen but when he got home from the grocery he tossed the keys on the kitchen counter instead. Since he did so absentmindedly he spent about five minutes walking back and forth on the main floor trying to find them. When he located them he darted out to the car and sped off as quickly as he could in the darkness.

\---

Around noon Laura tucked Allie into the rocker for a short post-nursing snooze. At ten days old she already showed a bit of personality; if she saw something new in her environment her barely-visible eyebrows shot up and her dark eyes tried to focus on the object. She liked being held and cuddled but if no one held her she usually kicked her way out of her blanket to stretch. Allie did better nursing on Laura's left side but fussed more on the right, and Clint thought her 'poop face' was hilarious. If Cooper held her she fell asleep rather quickly compared to Lilah who constantly sang or played with Allie's hands to keep her awake.

Nate's fever was down somewhat, but the poor little guy was still listless and lethargic all morning. As soon as Laura finished washing his sheets she set him back down in the crib and Nate immediately passed out for most of the morning. Laura kept him awake long enough to eat a small cup of plain oatmeal but after taking a dose of the Baby Tylenol he became drowsy quickly. She didn't mind; sleep was a better remedy for childhood illness than just about anything, so Nate could sleep until the older kids came home if he wanted. The only thing that annoyed her was that Clint was not back yet. He'd gone out to get Cooper's board for his science fair project and wrote that he would drop it off at school, but Laura figured he would be back by now.

She tried his cellphone a few times, but Clint Barton was the absolute _worst_ with cellphones. He either didn't keep it charged or left it on silent and about the only time he ever used it was to take pictures of the kids. Laura needed the SUV; she called the pediatrician and made an emergency appointment but she had no way of getting there without some form of transportation. After trying Clint's phone again, she set the phone on the cradle as the front doorbell rang. Quickly Laura flitted to the door before whoever was out there woke up the sleeping babies.

Outside stood two officers, a male and a female, in regular police attire along with police-issued coats. Laura opened the door and leaned against it. "Ma'am, sorry to disturb you, but do you own a black 2014 Chevrolet Equinox?"

"Yes. My husband has it at the moment, he's running errands."

The officer looked down at a few cards in her hand after scribbling notes. "Is your husband...Clinton Francis Barton?"

"That's him, is something wrong?"

"Ma'am, there's been an accident. We can't locate his body."


	7. One Day After

Clint jerked awake, cracking his head against the stone he laid against. At least he thought it was stone, Clint was not actually sure. Based on the hooks hanging from the ceiling he figured it might have been some kind of refrigerator or meat locker of some kind. He could vaguely remember what the butcher shop his father owned looked like, but there was a possibility he unintentionally repressed the memory. Honestly Clint would prefer to never think about his father ever again. 

The little room he woke in was only about ten square feet with enough room to stand. The smell was not as rank as he expected so it must have been a few years since its last use. Mold crept along in spots along the ceiling and near the only tiny window in the vicinity. It measured only about a foot by foot-and-a-half and surrounded by welded metal to keep the cold inside. The door had only one handle on the outside. Apart from the window, Clint was completely alone. At least he could get some idea of the general time of day.

He stretched out his legs to dig through his pockets; whoever captured him rid him of his wallet leaving him only with the receipt from the grocery and the actual grocery list. Based on how sluggish his brain felt he possibly had a concussion, and thanks to the wreck cuts and scrapes littered his skin. Nothing _felt_ broken but he was sure as hell sore and his neck felt stiff. Sleeping on a solid concrete floor against a stone wall probably did not help either. His coat buffered much of the shock during the crash, thankfully, but nothing protected his head at all so when Clint ran his fingers through his hair he shook out small shards of glass, rocks, and flakes of dried blood. At least his nose stopped bleeding.

Every half hour or so he heard voices outside the door, occasional arguing or laughing, but whoever stood outside did not enter. It seemed they were waiting for someone but Clint could not understand what they were saying. Clint saw their faces whenever they yanked him out of the truck and before they tossed him into the room, however now in his cloudy state Clint was mixing their faces together. One had a bent nose, the other looked like he had a scar on his forehead. Or was Clint thinking of the same person? He would need to look at them one more time before he could be certain. No names that he could remember, and the only thing they called each other was curse words or derogatory slang. 

Clint could see a few snowflakes fluttering around outside so he could tell that wherever they drove was not in a southern direction. They _might_ have been able to get into Canada if the border patrol was lenient yesterday and did not bother asking for his passport since he was asleep. As bloody as his nose and face was yesterday Clint could not see how they could get across the border without causing suspicion. Depending on how far they drove he could be as far as Chicago or even Michigan if the two guys who nabbed him switched off or had extra gas in the back of the truck. But that's if they drove East. If they drove West Clint could be as far away as Nebraska, even. He didn't recognize any of the landmarks visible from his little window and even though he could see there was some type of repair shop across the street he could not see an address or phone number that would clue him as to his location.

He lay prone once again, his arms underneath his head. Whenever someone walked in he would figure out what he could do. 

\---

The last time Laura used the emergency secured line was ten years ago when Cooper, hardly older than Nate at the time, tripped and cracked open his head on a metal railing. At the time she called Clint to let him know what happened before an alert came through that someone was using his insurance at a hospital somewhere in Iowa, and because of that phone call Clint was on a plane in two hours and missed his checkin. This time she called Natasha who contacted the rest of the Avengers and began setting up a flight while they were still on the phone.

Police officers spent at least three hours questioning her and looking around the farm for any clue as to where Clint was going when the wreck occurred or where he could have gone afterward. The location of the crash was about three miles from their house heading toward the interstate and there was nothing in the car save for the carseats so Clint had not made it back to the grocery store to pick up Cooper's trifold. That meant everything happened in the hour after Laura went to bed. Eight hours between when that occurred and when the police arrived. Another three for them to poke around the house. Nearly twelve hours with hardly any leads as to where Clint could have gone.

She tried the nearest hospitals to see if maybe someone brought him there or if he walked somehow. That was assuming Clint was actually alive. Laura had no way of knowing since his cellphone was located near the destroyed SUV, a bit scratched but still functioning. One of the police officers gave her what they could recover, which consisted of only Clint's wallet and the phone. The carseats would have to be replaced and the moment Laura remembered the carseats she bawled for about ten minutes, grateful that her babies were with her at the time and the older kids were at school. She called the school just to be sure then sat on the floor of the kitchen and cried until Allie woke up and whined. Laura dried her tears and went to comfort the baby until the older kids came home or Nate woke up.

The toddler's fever was still over 100 but thankfully was not as high as early that morning before Clint left. Laura woke him up around the same times she nursed Allie to have him drink some juice to keep him hydrated and to take the Baby Tylenol, otherwise she let him continue sleeping. When the older kids arrived home, angry and frustrated that no one was there at the bus stop to pick them up so they had to walk, Laura did not tell them what happened. The kids were used to their daddy disappearing with little to no notice but Cooper's teacher sent him home with a note about his missing trifold so he stomped through the front door demanding to see his dad.

Laura had them do their homework at the table while she worried her fingernails by the phone. She should be used to this feeling of uncertainty; for the first year of their marriage at least a quarter of it was spent alone worrying if Clint was alright while on a mission. This time was different, this time the battle was too close. When he left for a mission it often felt like a wall went up between her and her worry, as if Clint didn't _really_ exist for just a little while. Laura often felt the same way whenever they went to visit her parents and she didn't have to worry about which half of the house Clint was tearing up or if the kids were keeping their rooms clean. 

When Lilah asked where daddy went Laura told her he was called into work but when Natasha and the rest of the available Avengers appeared on their front porch, Cooper rightfully became suspicious. If Lilah had any doubts those were quickly squashed when both Auntie Nat and _Tetka_ Wanda walked through the door, along with Steve, Tony, Thor, Sam, and the Vision. Laura gave them just a few minutes to visit then sent them upstairs to play quietly so they did not wake their brother.

As soon as they heard the kids settle upstairs, the entire group went to the kitchen to discuss what happened. "I contacted Nick, he's on his way," Natasha said as everyone settled. She wanted to help Laura relax as much as possible, not for her sake but for the kids as well, so Nat held the baby against her shoulder and pat her back. Around the middle of the day Allie was awake for the longest stretches of time so her dark eyes were wide trying to figure out the group of new people. Laura suspected Allie was back up to her birth weight, or creeping up on it, based on how much she ate every few hours so the initial concern they had that Allie lost too much weight after her birth was gone. Allie was the only one of Laura's babies that dipped below six pounds within the first few weeks of their lives.

Steve stood in his usual spot in the doorframe to allow the ladies first pick of the chairs. "So what happened? Nat only told us bits and pieces on the way here."

"He went to the grocery store this morning to get something for Cooper," Laura started after a deep breath. "Before five or so. I don't know if he actually made it to the store or not, just that the SUV was destroyed. The police took some photos and the entire right side is completely smashed in, no skid marks at all. There wasn't a second car or truck so I thought that maybe whoever hit him took him to a hospital but none of the nearest hospitals have his name registered." Laura tried to keep her voice steady as she spoke but Steve could hear the waver. "They couldn't find his body, I don't even know if he's alive."

Natasha kept her face steeled, kissing the side of Allie's head. She always loved the silky feel of a baby's skin, as strange as that sounded, and the downy hair on the top of a newborn's head. Everything about Allie was so tiny, every breath against Natasha's shoulder barely registered and Allie fit snuggly in the palm of her hand. Her little wobbly head rocked against Natasha's shoulder as Allie tried to see more of her surroundings and every few minutes she squeaked or cooed from comfort. The lavender blanket Laura wrapped her in was sent by Laura's mother and Allie didn't tolerate any other blanket they owned. "Was anything recovered? Any footprints?"

"His wallet and phone were close by, but no footprints. I looked at his phone and he didn't try to call me or anyone else, all I saw were my calls."

In a rare moment of sincerity Tony turned to Laura with one leg crossed over the other. "Does he have anything on him? Anything that can be traced?"

Laura shook her head at the same time as Natasha. "SHIELD never implanted him with any tracers; his quiver has one built into the base but he was afraid that someone could trace him back here if he had any bodily tracers."

"Wait," Tony held up his finger. "The gizmos in his chest, do you know if he has them on?"

"He did this morning, they would have to be working for him to drive."

Tony nodded and reached into his briefcase for a tablet or a computer of some kind (Steve had no idea what to call it since it didn't bear much resemblance to either). "They must have a, uh, a model number or serial number of some kind, don't they? If I had that I might be able to locate him based on their radio frequencies." 

Steve understood radio for the most part, and he was only figuring out wi-fi and 3G, but he could not understand how any of that would work with the stimulators embedded into Clint's chest and brain. "How can you do that? They're tiny."

"Tiny, yeah, but that doesn't mean the signal is nonexistent. They're putting out a specific and individual frequency as long as they're on and working, I just have to dial in on _his_ specific and individual frequency. Could be difficult, but it's me we're talking about." Tony tapped away on his tablet using his strange symbols and code that only he understood, but Sam didn't buy it.

"So you're going to search for a frequency that has a radius of _inches_ that could be anywhere in the world? That's like searching for one specific candy bar the entire world over."

"Yup, and I'm gonna find that candy bar."

\---

The sound of the metallic door screeching open snapped Clint awake, sluggish but immediately defensive. The last thing he ate was the popsicle he helped Nathaniel finish at about 4:30 in the morning so hunger was making him just a bit slower. It wasn't the first time he'd gone without food, under Loki he didn't eat for three days or more, so a few hours wouldn't hurt him.

Three people stepped into the locker, two of whom Clint recognized as the men who dragged him out of the truck. The third seemed familiar but Clint could not place him. He was the first to speak. "You dumbasses left him with his clothes? He's a fucking SHIELD agent, he can escape with anything, get 'em off." 

Clint waited until the two were close before he took a swing at either of them, but they were ready for him to fight. The first punch landed across the shorter man's face which left the second open to swing an electrified stun baton against Clint's hip. Immediately his entire right side seized and dropped him to the floor and the implants in his chest popped in some fashion. As soon as the baton was removed the implants resolved whatever issue they had with the high voltage running through his system. He continued to fight and tried to list himself up once again but a second blow to his back dropped him. They kicked him then, their steel-toe boots digging into the muscles of his stomach and back until the pain was too much.

"You got your knife on you, Fletch?" Clint wasn't sure which of the two was Fletch but he could hear the flick of a knife or switchblade opening. The man on his right pulled at his coat until Clint was practically off the ground and stabbed the knife through the coat. A few quick maneuvers and the coat split in half at the back, then the two started on his shirt. The cold concrete of the floor burned his chest the moment his skin touched the floor. 

He figured they would stop there but the third unknown individual told them to keep going. One of the men put a knee in his back to keep him still while the other worked on slicing through the fabric of his pants, then cutting through the laces of his boots. Down to only his boxers, the two stood Clint up once again and held him before the third man who looked him over like a shark looks at chum. "All of it."

The taller man, who must be Fletch since he held the switchblade, bent his arm back until his shoulder threatened to pop out of its socket to keep Clint from swinging again as he cut through the fabric of his boxers. Now totally nude, redness crept along his skin from touching the cold floor. Clint squinted at the third man until the name popped into the front of his brain. "...Gibs?"

Alex Gibson. That was the guy's name. Clint remembered him as a quiet, unassuming level three agent a few years ago who did little more than show up and do what others told him to do. He was a pushover, actually. Other agents either made fun of him behind his back or openly bullied him but there were a few that stuck up for him. He looked about the same, maybe a tad beefier than the last time Clint saw him. Of the three men Gibs was by far the shortest.

Gibs stepped forward to get a better look at Clint's face, stopping when he noticed the raised lumps under Clint's collar bones. He pressed on the left implant with his thumb then squeezed the sides as if doing so would give him a better look at it. "SHIELD stick you with _two_ trackers after you turned traitor for Loki?"

"No, they aren't trackers. They keep my limbs still, that's all they do. I don't have any trackers in me."

"Bullshit. Fletch, give me your knife." Fletch tossed him the blade as Clint tried to squirm away once again; if he could get out of their grasps he could probably escape and run to the repair shop across the street. Even if they called the cops on a crazy, beat up naked man Clint would be alright with that. The other man, the smaller unnamed one, whipped out the baton once again and gutted Clint in the stomach with it causing his legs to go out from beneath him. They stood him up on weak and shaky knees. "Let's get rid of these."

Gibs poked at a few spots around the outline of the implant until he found an acceptably soft spot to jam the blade through Clint's skin. Clint cried out as the blade slowly ripped through the skin around the implant in a sawing motion. The blade itself was not sharp, Fletch obviously did not take care of it, and by the time Gibs finished cutting enough to expose the implant the skin was rough and mottled. Blood streamed down Clint's chest and legs, splattering into a small puddle at his feet. His face blanched and he felt like throwing up.

With the implant exposed Gibs jammed his finger in the hole until he had a good grip on the body of the implant and tugged, causing Clint's head to jerk slightly since the wire connected to the implant was thread through his neck and into his brain. A small plastic rim and cap kept the wire secure and also covered the hole bored into Clint's skull. Gibs tugged once again, pulling some of the slack wire out so he could wrap his entire hand around the implant and _pull_.

Even though the brain itself cannot actually feel pain, Clint could feel the cap in his skull dislodge and the wire move around his scalp. The entire wire did not come out completely, Gibs used the knife to cut the implant free from the wire, but it was enough to cause Clint to black out momentarily. Gibs slapped him in the face to wake Clint up again. "We aren't done yet, Barton, we still have one more to go."

\---

Tony nearly dropped his coffee mug when his tablet finally pinged with a notification. He immediately sat up and dove for it, hopping over the back of the couch to retrieve it from a coffee table. Everyone sat up a bit straighter and quieted until Tony's face fell.

"I was able to find where the implants were registered," Tony practically whispered. "But either they're turned off.."

Steve twisted his hands together. "Or?"

"Either they're turned off or he's dead. I'm sorry."


	8. Two Days After

Laura spent much of the night awake, tossing and turning in bed. Clint's usual half of the bed felt so cold and empty, if it were not for his pillow smelling like sweat and grass Laura would feel even more hollow. She hugged his pillow to her chest during the night even though she did not really sleep but for a few hazy minutes, instead she spent most of the night watching Allie sleep. With the possibility of Clint being gone permanently suddenly Laura could see Clint in Allie's features much more clearly. The baby bunched her eyebrows together like Clint, so far had a tiny button nose like Nathaniel, Clint's bony fingers, his weird crooked toes that curved slightly inward (but only the toe next to her little toe, like her daddy's). Allie's hair was darker than Nathaniel's but there was a possibility it would become lighter in the future, right now she had something of a brown smudge on the top of her head for hair and a bald spot on the back from laying down so often. 

Natasha set up the air mattress in Laura and Clint's room for both personal and logistical reasons. Lilah's room already had Wanda and there was not enough space, Cooper had Sam in his room in a sleeping bag. Being the diva that he is Tony took the available guest room while Steve crashed on the couch downstairs. Thor could go days without sleep (at least, he could in Midgard) and Vision did not require sleep at all so they spent much of their time outside guarding the house. Nat also stayed in their room to help take care of Nate; her enhanced immune system could fight off whatever bug the toddler had so she did not worry about being sick and this way Laura could worry less about transferring whatever he had to the baby. And Nat loved the little guy even though she frequently called him "преда́тель", the Russian word for 'traitor.' Obviously she meant it as a joke; she was still jokingly upset that Nate was born a boy instead of a girl, and now even though Allie was also named after her (Alianovna, Nat's middle name) she still jabbed at Clint for making her name second. 

Tony kept up his search for most of the night but he became increasingly frustrated as the night went on. As much as Tony liked to annoy Clint and poke fun at him, he genuinely cared. They both had rampant abandonment issues with their fathers; Howard was neglectful and Harold was abusive. Both were raised by someone woefully unequipped to do so and they were both smart in their own ways, Tony was a certified genius but had almost no street-smarts while Clint's formal education stopped at age eight but he could survive for weeks on end with five dollars and a few cans of tuna. That was about where their similarities ended, and outwardly most people would say they were total opposites. Ever since he was born Tony's life had been examined and scrutinized by the media in some form or another, whether it was when he built an engine at four, when his parents died, or his fifteen years on a drunken bender. Clint was largely ignored and forgotten growing up, and when he became an adult and got married he preferred to stay that way to keep his family safe. He didn't need much, didn't care for the newest technologies, got much of his information about the world from Laura talking about what she watched on the news. Hell, Cooper understood more about science than Clint did. It probably did not help that Clint was also severely dyslexic and since he missed the window of opportunity to improve the condition. Clint could write his name but more often than not it was easier for him to just dictate mission reports to either a recorder or transcriptionist instead of trying to write the report. 

Pretending that nothing was wrong was the hardest thing to do for Laura. When she tucked in the older kids for the night Cooper asked where his dad went and why the rest of the team showed up, while Lilah wanted to know if daddy would be home in a few days. Looking into Cooper's worried chocolate-brown eyes and lying to him hurt Laura deeply although since Lilah's question was a little more vague Laura answered her somewhat easily. But she refused to allow herself to cry, at least not in front of her children. When she heard Tony finally trudge up the steps sometime in the early morning in defeat she allowed herself a few tears. 

The following morning she was not surprised in the slightest that Nick Fury sat at the kitchen table with coffee made and all the breakfast food he could find in the pantry scattered around for whoever was hungry. Nick had done the same thing every so often ever since Laura and Clint were married, at first to make sure she was not a potential security threat but then as time went on he showed up out of the blue because he wanted to do so. Nick also arrived with a secure, bullet-proof SHIELD-issued vehicle to take the kids to school. He came back to Laura trying to coax the baby into nursing and Natasha feeding some Cheerios to Nate on her lap. "That's right, преда́тель," Natasha muttered under her breath. "Eat more calories so you can get chunkier." Nate had all of his teeth and could sit in a booster seat at the table now but since every seat had an occupant and the high chair took up a large amount of space it was easier for Nate to just sit on someone's lap.

Nick sat at the head of the table with a coffee cup warming his hands, the rest of the Avengers mulling about near him. "Alright, twenty-four hours and Barton's now officially a missing person so he'll at least show up as an alert if stopped by police. Stark, what were you able to find?"

Tony dug through his briefcase and pulled out a file of papers that were half-printed, half-scribbled gibberish. "Just based on the photos of the wreck, not a whole lot. Whatever hit him was huge and solid, large enough to destroy the SUV and flip it multiple times. As wide as the impact on the SUV is, you're looking at either a huge Mac truck or some kind of construction vehicle."

At the mention of construction Laura shifted the baby to the other side. "There's some bridge construction about half a mile away from where the wreck happened," she muttered, becoming somewhat frustrated at Allie spitting out Laura's nipple multiple times. "Sweet Pea, you're just going to make yourself mad." Laura had no problem breastfeeding in front of Natasha or Nick; both of them had seen her nurse multiple babies so any shame Laura felt about it disappeared years ago. The only person who appeared to have any concern was Tony, who awkwardly shuffled around in his seat desperate for somewhere else to look or something interesting to peruse. Allie's face bunched and she let out a squeaky cry in frustration, hardly louder than a whisper. Nate stretched across the table with a handful of Cheerios.

"Baby Wally hungry? Her have my juice," he declared, practically kneeling on the table. Natasha plucked him by his waist and settled him on her lap once again. The first time Nate watched Laura get ready to nurse Allie he tried to shove the baby off to the side and lay across Laura's lap, thinking it was his turn. Clint telling him 'no' and removing Nate from Laura's lap resulted in a fifteen minute meltdown soothed only by a compromise in which Laura held him while he drank from his sippy-cup. Since then Nate tried to feed her everything from oatmeal to ice cream to Cheetohs. Thankfully the baby did not have enough coordination to put anything in her mouth willingly yet.

"She's not there yet, преда́тель, she still has to get her juice from mommy," Natasha gently scolded. She had no idea if Nate understood what 'преда́тель' actually meant but if anything Nate recognized that whenever Natasha said the word she referred to him. Like the older kids Nate could listen to a few Russian phrases but he responded to almost everything in short clipped phrases so Natasha figured his responses were reasonable. Wanda primarily spoke Sokovian to him, and since Sokovian and Russian sounded similar to untrained ears, at times Natasha said something to him in Russian and received a Sokovian response.

Steve unwrapped his arms and stood at his full intimidating height. "Thor and I can scout the construction site, see if there is anything missing or damaged." Thor nodded in agreement and nabbed Mjölnir from its spot on the countertop, seemingly always ready for a battle of some kind. He considered going to Heimdall and asking him for Barton's location but Heimdall rarely involves himself with Midgardian issues, even those related to teammates. While the Bifrost was still being repaired Heimdall would check in on Jane Foster but typically said little more than if she was well or not. Actually, that was better than nothing.

"While the Captain and I are away I'm going to contact Heimdal; he would be able to tell us if Barton is alive." Everyone around the room nodded, although Laura bit her lip as she did so. This was not the first time Clint had gone missing; Clint spent about a month so deep under cover that the only thing SHIELD knew was that Clint was still alive but had no other information. That knowledge still did not make the feeling any easier.

\---

"Stop moving, motherfucker!"

Clint sat with his back against the wall staring at one of the two goons eating a sub sandwich, trying to control his spasming limbs. Ever since Gibs cut through the wires on his implants Clint's body essentially exploded in movement and now the only way he could sit up continuously without falling over was if he sat in the corner of the tiny meat locker. They knew he was hungry; now instead of eating outside the locker they purposefully ate in front of Clint and often ate the most pungent food they could find. Clint could go days without eating, but with the cold air and blood loss he would need water or something to replace the lost electrolytes. 

His chest burned, and even though the holes still had a loose flap of skin attached they were not enough to cover the wounds entirely without causing excruciating pain any time Clint touched the skin. The surrounding skin was still an angry red and leaked clear plasma when not openly bleeding. At times Clint spasmed so hard he tore open the wounds under his collar bones and they bled thin rivers down his chest and into his lap. Gibs was yet to provide Clint with a blanket or even a towel to sit on or wrap around himself, so after sitting on the cold floor for hours Clint's ass was frozen and numb. He tried walking around when his foot was not locked up, if anything to keep his blood circulating, but the meat locker was only about the size of a standard garden shed so Clint couldn't jog or do anything strenuous.

Fletch and Marty, the smaller of the two, tried antagonizing Clint to make him angry but Clint rarely said a word. The only noise he made was an involuntary grunt when his neck spasmed, but they kept trying until they finally struck a nerve in Clint that made him seethe. "You know," Marty said loud enough to Fletch so Clint would overhear. "We should go back and get Barton's wife, make him watch while we fuck her."

Fletch grinned and picked at his sandwich. "We could do that, or we could fuck the little girl. It was allowed in the Bible, after all." 

Clint bit into his cheek to keep from launching at the pair; plenty of bad guys said similar things about Laura even though none of them knew she even existed. But somehow these two not only knew about Laura, they also knew about Lilah. Clint decided immediately that both of them would hurt so badly that death would be a welcome relief.

When Clint's implants were turned off and he became upset for whatever reason, typically because Cooper and Lilah were bickering, his tremors increased exponentially. When they were under control Clint could deal with their bullshit without so much as blinking but without them he had difficulty controlling himself or suppressing his emotions. "Look, Fletch, it's making him flop around more. You saw how little that girl is; you sure she could handle that kind of cock?"

Marty shrugged his shoulder as he finished the last of his sandwich and clapped his hands together to get rid of the crumbs. "Probably not, but as small as her mouth is she'd make my dick seem huge in comparison. Look up Genesis…uh, Genesis 30. Read the verse about Bilhah.”

Fletch tugged out a brown leather-bound bible from the duffle bag next to him, deeply marred from years of use and full of highlighted notes written in the margins. He flipped through the first few pages and held the bible up to his face to read the minute text easily. “She said, ‘here is my maid Bilhah, go in to her that she may bear on my knees, that through her I too may have children.’” 

“Yup, God wants us to fuck her. And obviously the little one we’d take as a concubine.”

As soon as Fletch slapped the bible shut and Clint got a better look at the outside cover he immediately recognized the two. The realization made him nearly throw up: they were the Seventh-Day Adventists that came to the front door the other day, the day Lilah was outside playing with her jump rope. They talked to Lilah.

Since the door’s handle was only on the outside, Fletch and Marty were stuck inside with Clint until Gibs came back to let them out. The possibility of overpowering the two was quickly diminishing the more strength Clint lost from hunger and thirst. He also had no idea how the plastic caps in his skull were affecting his brain; last night he nudged and massaged them back into place but he could tell that one was definitely not inserted properly. When the implants were installed, although he was awake for the procedure, he was numbed out of his mind and his head secured with a wire cage to keep from moving. He certainly didn’t feel anything then, but this time the sensation of clicking the caps back into bone made him dry-heave.

With their meal complete the two balled up the wrappers, Fletch throwing his at Clint. He let the paper bounce off his face and onto the floor; he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of watching him pluck at it for crumbs. Two days without food was irritating, but two days without water was becoming a problem. At night when the temperature flatlined he huddled in the corner into as tight of a ball as possible to stave off the cold. At times he woke up heaving, taking deep breaths to warm his lungs back up again until the ice broke apart inside his chest cavity. 

Gibs pounded on the door, causing all three of them to jump. Clint cracked his head against the wall once again and needed a moment for his eyes to adjust; he felt dizzy if he moved too quickly and at times he spat out murky bile bubbling up from his gut. He could tell he was running a fever; despite the cold the back of his neck felt hot and he wavered between shivering to sweating within the span of a few minutes. Had Clint experienced worse? Yup. But he would still bitch about it the entire time.

Once the door creaked open, Gibs grinned at Clint and kneeled in front of him. “Having fun yet, Barton? Enjoying the ride?”

Clint smirked right back, unwilling to give Gibs the satisfaction of seeing Clint in pain. He sat up straighter, trying to force his limbs back into submission. Surely to God there had to be some swelling in his brain to help dampen the tremors. The roiling in his belly suddenly sent an eruption of bile and mucus up through Clint’s esophagus and as soon as Gibs’ face was mere inches from his, Clint coughed the hot juice into Gibs’ face. For that, Gibs punched him underneath his left eye, fracturing the socket.

While Clint tried to keep his vision from spinning, Gibs stood to his full height again and snapped his finger, ordering the other two out. “Ya know, Barton, I was going to give your family a call so you could see them one last time. But I think I’ll hold off on that. See you tomorrow, Barton.”

\---

When Thor and Vision returned from their search, the older kids were thankfully at school with only Nathaniel puttering around the living room playing with various toys. Natasha held Allie on her lap again, her tiny diapered butt against Natasha’s stomach, gently rocking her from side to side. Allie chirped and grunted at her or stared at Tony’s facial hair. Tony looked ready to put on a hazmat suit.

Thor did not wait for someone to open the door after he knocked. Instead he burst through, stomping triumphantly into the room. “I BRING NEWS.” The entire room collectively jumped out of their respective skins, Nate running over to Laura and tucking his face into her leg. “We have located the source of the wreck. It is a large yellow beast, although I did not see any horns on it. Just one large mechanism at the front.”

“What he means to say,” Vision drawled in his rich accent. “We found the bulldozer that slammed into your vehicle. And a few security feeds.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, hello! I know it's been a while. I'm back in school again to get my doctorate, and that's been taking up my entire existence for the past few weeks, but in November I plan on knocking this one out!


	9. Three Days After

Natasha stood before a row of shelves in a large store, absolutely out of her depth. Each shelf contained stacks of baby formula of every kind imaginable, and some she never knew existed. For every type of formula there existed a powdered version, a pre-mixed version, large cans, small cans, even some that were pre-measured and disposable. Laura’s text only read ‘formula,’ so for the ten minutes Nat waited to hear from Laura once again she idled up and down the aisle poking at the rows of baby crap that companies told parents they needed. Clint would never in his life admit it, but when Cooper was born he had the worst case of First-Time Parent Syndrome that Natasha ever saw. By the time Nate came along, the little guy managed to eat the felt tip off a highlighter and Clint merely shrugged.

A second text came in from Laura with an image of the formula she needed. Natasha, unsure of how long a can would last, snagged whatever was on the shelf. Once the basket she held could no longer hold anything, she picked up a gallon of infant water and head for the check-out line. Who knew that newborns needed special water, as if humanity did not spend hundreds of thousands of years evolving without it. 

Driving back to the farm took some time, roughly an hour or so. As she parked the SUV and gathered her shopping bags Nate called to her from the porch, his little face barely visible through his winter clothes. “Tee-tee ball?” Behind him, Steve waved a small rubber soccer ball in her direction then rolled it at Nate, who immediately turned and tried to throw it to Natasha despite her shaking her head. The ball landed a good twenty feet away, and when Nat did make any move to pick it up the toddler darted from the porch to retrieve it. 

“Sorry, little man, I need to give these to mommy.” Nathaniel tried to tug on one of the bags and look inside. “These are for Allie, nothing in here for Nate.” The little boy stuffed his tiny soccer ball in one of the bags and grinned up at her.

“ _That_ Nataniel!” 

She smiled down at him and opened the bag so he could reach inside. “Yeah, that’s Nathaniel’s. Throw it back at Steve, go get him.” With Nate occupied once again, she nudged open the front door with her foot and listened for Laura. All she heard was Allie’s pathetic whines and whimpers from upstairs. Nat set all the bags on the kitchen counter and tugged a pre-filled bottle from the box, twisting the bottle top until it snapped into place. Nearing Clint and Laura’s room, she could hear sniffles as well.

As soon as she saw Nat in the doorway, Laura attempted to dry her eyes with her sweatshirt and smile up at Nat from the rocking chair. “Thanks for going to the store for me,” she whispered over Allie’s fussing. Without a word, Natasha handed her the bottle and sat on the bed. Allie complained at the strange rubbery item in her mouth until realizing it contained milk for her, whereupon she sucked and slurped with abandon. “Is that better, Sweet Pea? I’m sure it is.”

They sat in silence save for Allie’s squeaks and chirps as she ate. Fussing so much made her tired, and once she felt content she dozed in Laura’s arms with her tiny fists bunched against her face. As soon as the baby slept, Laura tightened the purple blanket around her. “I’m not making any milk for her.”

Nat stroked her finger on the top of Allie’s head and nodded, unsure of what to say. This was something out of her depth, but she knew how much of Laura’s identity consisted of being a mom. Being unable to nurse her baby made Laura feel like less of a mother; Natasha could at least gather that much from Laura’s face. “I’ve just been so stressed out and I miss him and…” Laura trailed off when the baby squirmed, her tiny tongue sticking out of her mouth, causing Laura to smile down at her. “Your daddy does that when he’s concentrating on something, you know.”

“Yeah, I’m surprised he doesn’t give himself a headache when he’s concentrating that hard.” Natasha stretched and dropped back onto their bed, staring up at the ceiling. “Tony still working?”

Laura nodded, slowly making her way upward to set the baby back down in her bassinet. “Uh-huh, and he’s made my office a disaster zone. Grab the monitor there, on the side table. We’ll leave her to sleep, and Nathaniel probably needs to come inside before his nose freezes.”

They head downstairs, meeting Steve at the front door with Nate bundled up in his arms. “Mommy, cold.”

“It’s very cold, baby. You want mommy to wrap you up in your blanket?”

Nate shook his head as Laura pulled the hat Wanda knitted for him off his head. “No, Steeb blanket.”

Laura pat Steve’s shoulder. “Guess I’ve been replaced. You don’t mind rocking him, do you? He’ll probably fall asleep on you if you read to him.” Steve shook his head, moving the toddler around as Laura undressed him from his outdoor clothes.

“Nah, I don’t mind. Anything I can do to help.” Steve dropped onto the edge of the couch in front of the fireplace with Nate sitting on his hip. When Laura laid a blanket over them, Nate lay across Steve’s chest to wait for their book. Laura guessed that they wouldn’t make it through half of the Dr. Seuss book before Nate fell asleep.

With Steve and Nate occupied, Laura followed Nat back into her office and slid the door open. Tony hunched over his computer like something of a mad scientist, his fingers flying across the keyboard. Fury flipped through photos of the wreck in Laura’s chair while Thor examined the contents of the office. Before Thor could pick something up from one of the shelves Tony snapped his finger at him. “Point Break, tell her what Heimlich told you.”

The confusion on Thor’s face made Laura quietly snort. Thor twirled Mjölnir in his hand and shuffled his feet. “Do you refer to Heim _dall_?”

“Yeah, whatever, just tell her what he said.”

Thor nodded and smiled at her. “Yes, I spoke with Heimdall and he gave excellent news. Barton lives, and he is somewhere west of our location.”

The news made Laura bite her lip to keep from crying. Instead she wrapped her arm around Thor’s neck and pulled his head lower so she could kiss his cheek. “Thank you,” she croaked, wiping tears away from her face. “Thank you so much.” Hearing anything about her husband renewed her spirit, as if someone lit a match in a dark room. It meant there was hope. 

\---

Clint paced around the meat locker to keep his blood circulating, forcing himself to stay awake. As the days passed he found this increasingly difficult to do. How many days had he been here? Two? Three? Something like that. He probably should have marked it in some way on the wall, that would have been the smart thing to do.  
The skin around his implant holes were black this morning, and Clint could no longer feel the surrounding skin. He knew what that meant, but he forgot the name of it. Necro-something or other. It meant that skin was dead and would slowly poison him without treatment.

He was probably dying, Clint was sure of that. Whenever he sat his found it increasingly difficult to stand up again. If he stayed still too long, his limbs turned red and swollen, so he tried to pace around and keep his blood moving but his joints were also on fire. The lack of food didn’t bother him, it was the thirst that hurt the most. His throat felt dry, and leaving his eyes open too long made them dry out as well. Clint _did_ find a water source, however.

In the morning when the sun shined directly on his little window, Clint noticed that the ice melted and pooled in a small fissure that ran along the window from where it was not sealed properly (or eroded away, most likely). With a little bit of scratching, Clint widened the fissure enough to allow a small drip of moldy brown water to ease through. The first time Clint licked and slurped at the wall he immediately turned around and threw up in a corner, but he had no other option than to will himself from heaving. 

Gibs popped in once to give Clint his shredded pants and jacket. Since he did not have a way to keep the fabric together, Clint sat on them in a pile to keep his ass from getting chapped. Whenever he stood he wrapped the coat around his shoulders with the zipper against his back to warm up just a bit. Not much, but it helped. Gibs figured Clint was too weak to do anything dangerous with his clothes at this point.

One of Gibs’ cronies, Fletcher, checked on him every few hours just to make sure Clint was still alive. They never said the other one’s name, and at this point Clint did not give a fuck what it was. They were waiting for him to give up, for Clint to beg that they kill him, but Bartons were hard-headed bastards. If Clint’s heart did not give out on him, Gibs and his goons were in for a long wait.

Clint leaned against the wall for a moment to keep his head from spinning, just as Gibs yanked the main door open. Beautiful heat slowly radiated inward; if there was one positive thing about Gibs’ visits, it was the warm hallway that gave Clint a break. Sometimes he stalled and fought with Gibs so the door would remain open longer.  
“How goes it, Barton?”

For a moment, Clint savored the warmth slowly wafting into the locker. He grinned as he did so. “Time of my life.” Due to his dry throat, Clint’s voice sounded scratched and frog-like. Gibs stood in front of Clint and lightly slapped the side of his face to wake him up again.

“Good, because it probably won’t last much longer. I want you to suffer for what you’ve done.”

Clint scrunched his face, trying to focus his eyes on Gibs. “What I’ve done? I didn’t do fuck-all to you. You weren’t even in the same department as I was.”

As if he didn’t hear him, Gibs tugged his phone out of is pocket and opened the photos app. “You ever actually see the agents you killed, Barton? Take a look. You killed each one of them, ruined their families, took away fathers, mothers, siblings. This was all your fault.” As he spoke, Gibs thumbed through each of the photos, photos of men and women with arrows through their skulls, chests, faces nearly unrecognizable from the Hellicarrier explosion. One agent who must’ve been close to the initial blast was left with nothing but half his skull, brain matter, bones, and tissue splattered around him. “You don’t deserve a family after what you did, Barton.”

“I wasn’t able to control it, everything was Loki’s doing.”

“And you were too weak to fend him off! For all anyone else knows, you wanted to be captured. I’m surprised you didn’t throw yourself at his feet.”  
Clint tried to stand up to his full height but wasn’t able without feeling excessively dizzy. There was something…off about Gibs, more so than just the fact that he was batshit insane. “What’s all of this even about, Gibson?”

The question obviously took him off-guard, and Gibs floundered for just a moment before stuffing the phone back into his pocket. They stared at each other for just a moment until Gibs looked down at his feet, briefly. “They were the only agents who gave a fuck about me.”

That was it. Gibs was still mourning his friends, and it was Clint who took them away. “Gibs, I…I’m sorry-“

“Save it. I don’t care about your apologies.” Gibs left Clint standing in his spot and head back to the door. “I’ll be back in an hour. You can call your family and say goodbye.” 

\---

Natasha gently rocked her hips back and forth, listening to Allie chatter and squeak back at her. After a nap she was usually sociable and wanted to “talk” with whoever would hold her and give her attention. She also had the hiccups, and because of that Nat was head-over-heels in love with this baby.   
As she sauntered back and forth around the kitchen, the front doorbell rang. Since she was closest, she set Allie on her shoulder and opened the door. On the porch stood a short man with thin glasses and a mop of dark, curly hair.

“ _Bruce?_ ”


	10. Four Days After

If Natasha had to guess, she would say Bruce had not cut his hair in nearly three months. He looked like he shaved his face and kept up with regular grooming, but the short Roman-esque hairstyle he had the last time she saw him was long and shaggy once again. Thinking about silly details like the length of Bruce’s hair kept her from focusing on the anger and hurt she still felt.

Tony gave Bruce a very quick run-down of the past few days (“Looking for Legolas,” he said, “figure your soap-opera crap out first, then come help us.”). There were so many questions he wanted to ask, but it was only fair to Natasha to talk for a bit. He did run off and leave her without a word for two years. From his perspective, it looked like she fared just fine as she bounced a very new baby on her shoulder to help her burp. “How old is she?”

“Almost three weeks.” Everything she said to Bruce since he dropped his stuff in the closet in the hallway was clipped and short. Natasha in no way felt ready for this conversation. “Her name’s Wanda Aliana. Allie. Tony calls her Wallie.” Spoken words still sounded like gibberish to Allie, but she liked listening to people. She was quickly soothed by almost everyone who talked to her (maybe not so much by Lilah), and she noticed that people said the word “Allie” around her often. Eventually, Allie would figure out what that meant. 

Bruce nodded and scratched the back of his neck. “I like the Russian name,” he mumbled, barely moving his lips. “And you look great; hard to believe she’s only a few weeks old. I kind of figured she would have red hair, though.”

For a moment, Nat made no facial movement whatsoever, and Bruce worried he said something wrong again. Was it taboo to comment on a woman’s appearance after having a baby? Maybe Natasha’s enhanced metabolic system made the effects of pregnancy wear off faster. That was certainly not as important as to how she had a baby; the last time they really talked, Nat said she was unable to have kids. To be fair, Bruce could morph into a giant green beast at a moment’s notice, fought gods and aliens and monsters; Natasha having a baby is probably the least surprising thing he’d seen in the past five years or so. Would it be rude of him to ask? There was also the deep pain in his gut when he realized that if Nat had a baby, it meant she moved on. Bruce knew what taking a bullet felt like, and this was similar.

“Bruce, she isn’t mine. She’s Clint and Laura’s; I’m just watching her so Laura can sleep.” 

He wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or cry or slam his head into the table due to his paranoia. When his brain couldn’t pick one of those options, he only chuckled a bit. Nat only gave him a half-grin, something Bruce didn’t realize until that moment that he missed. “Oh, uh, right. I’m sorry, I…yeah, that’s my mistake.” Now that he gave himself a moment to look at the baby carefully and not in contempt, Allie didn’t look anything like Natasha. What little hair the baby had on her head (at least on the top; she had a bald spot on the back of her head) resembled Laura’s dark walnut brown, and Allie’s round face was a clone of her father. 

In some sick way, Bruce was relieved. 

Maybe it was an emotion the Hulk contributed, an almost primal need to…claim her, or something. Bruce couldn’t think of how to describe it. Bruce felt disgusted by such a longing; Nat was her own woman, and there was nothing about her to “claim.” Hulk enjoyed the discomfort Bruce felt at the thought. There were some emotions that at times Bruce couldn’t tell where he ended and Hulk began, but what he felt now was definitely Hulk.

Bruce knew there was another, that he was being replaced, and despite the past few days he had to mull over the thought he refused to accept it until Nat told him herself. Maria Hill told him when he wandered to the Avengers Tower a few days ago, hoping someone would be there to forgive him for running away so he would no longer have to feel guilty. He abandoned everything when he left, his teammates, his research. And Natasha. But Bruce was happy there was someone else, at least he tried to convince himself he felt that way. It meant she was moving on and had someone who cared about her. He didn’t know anything about the new man, other than his name. Bruce was afraid if he knew much more about him, he would lose any hope he had left of re-connecting with her. 

Before their conversation could grow any more awkward, Laura dragged her feet into the kitchen as if on autopilot. She paused when she saw Bruce, but after twenty or so people came and went through her house over the past week, she was more amused than anything else. Her life since the birth of her youngest daughter had been one hellacious cluster-fuck, why not add one more person to the mix? The only remaining emotion Laura could feel at this point was to laugh uncontrollably like a madman, and she was quickly reaching that point. As Laura went upstairs to rest about an hour ago, she could hear Nate jabbering at Steve while he read the “boo-fish” book: where daddy? Want daddy. Clint always read Nate’s books in silly voices, to the point that sometimes Laura refused to let Clint tuck him in at night because Clint “reading” to him would just wind Nate up again. Clint usually made up the words as well; Laura knew about Clint’s difficulties with reading, and since the font in toddler books was easier for Clint to read than the older kids’ books, he read to Nate while Laura read to Lilah. Cooper was too grown up to be read stories, apparently. Even though whenever he heard Lilah giggling at a story he came in to listen anyway.

Thinking about something as simple as their bedtime routine made Laura’s eyes well up once again. A third of her nap was spent quietly crying into the last shirt Clint wore to bed when he was home. When she finally did fall asleep, it was only for a few minutes. Nat kept the baby with her downstairs in the living room, taking little videos of her to show Clint whenever they found him. Babies grew so fast, Natasha didn’t want him to miss anything. When Clint and Natasha first met, Cooper was only a few months old so in the sporadic times Nat went to the farm he was practically a new kid every time she was there. 

“Umm, hi, Laura,” Bruce stuttered, barely audible over the drawers Laura shuffled through. She couldn’t actually remember what she was looking for, however. Instead she turned around and rested her hip against the counter. “I’m here to help out in whatever way I can.”

Maybe it was the agent in her that lay dormant for nearly ten years, but Bruce was a terrible liar. He was here for Natasha, and Clint was more of an afterthought. Regardless, Laura was polite and smiled at him. “Thanks, Bruce. Glad to see you’re doing okay.” When Allie heard mommy’s voice, she perked her eyebrows and tried to find the source. Her weak neck muscles wouldn’t cooperate, so she scrunched her face to whine. “Oh, Sweet Pea, you’re okay, mommy’s right here.” Nat maneuvered the baby so Laura could take her, briefly holding her up just to agitate her. “Is Auntie Nat being mean to you? Say ‘stop that, Auntie Nat.’”

Laura had to mentally laugh at herself: she was still trying to pretend that nothing was wrong for an infant whose memory lasted all of three minutes. For all Laura knew, Allie didn’t even remember her daddy in the four days since he was taken, and as the hours stretched on Laura was becoming less sure that Allie would ever know him. But she couldn’t give up on Clint; until she received word that he was truly dead, Laura would continue believing he was alive. Probably being a huge pain the ass, but an alive pain in the ass. 

As the women cooed and fawned over the baby, Bruce toyed with the frayed sleeve of his sweater. Despite how small he appeared, having the Hulk in his brain also made his natural body temperature consistently run much hotter than expected so walking around in Iowa snow did not really phase him. Truthfully, he felt feverish, but that was only because he was emotionally out of whack and concentrated on keeping things in check. In the back of his mind, near his cerebellum where Hulk lived (in the most primal part of the brain, no less), Banner could feel Hulk pounding on the door that kept Bruce’s rage in check. He needed an outlet, or a distraction, one of the two.  
He chewed on his thumbnail for a moment until Tony from the office. “Alright, you guys would suck as an episode of Days of Our Lives. Get in here, Jolly Green.” A distraction was just what he needed right now, and Bruce did not hesitate for a moment to hop from his seat at the kitchen table and into the office. Thor fiddled with random objects around the office to pretend that he wasn’t listening to their conversation.

“Good to see you alive and well, Dr. Banner,” Fury mused from his spot at the main desk. Even when he wasn’t commanding the Hellicarrier he made himself in charge of the operation. Probably a good thing, too, since Tony was scooting around on the floor pouring over maps and spreadsheets. Someone had to remind him to eat.  
Tony wavered between serenity and mild hysteria throughout the day, becoming more anxious the closer he came to a lead of some kind. But they only lasted for so long until he threw his hands up and stormed off for about five minutes. He would come back eventually, only after a slew of curses and another round of coffee brought him back. Tony was a romantic, maybe, but he also knew his share of broken homes and fucked up family dynamics. He would do anything right now to prevent that from happening for Barton and his wife. And the multitude of offspring they insisted on having, for some reason. Tony wouldn’t admit it out loud, but he actually did care for the Little Hawks (or whatever bird parody he called them that week). Tony just didn’t want any of them to touch him. He could care from afar. And that’s what he was doing; he refused to let those kids down by losing their dad. Tony knew how it felt not to have his father around when needed; hell, based on the minute amount of information Barton volunteered about his life before SHIELD, Clint knew that feeling as well. 

They might not be the best of friends (on the surface Clint always looked annoyed with Tony), but they also had a weird mutual respect that only two men who grew up in seriously fucked up circumstances could have. Howard Stark never hit Tony, not physically, but at times Tony wished he did. It would’ve been one of the rare moments Tony ever made physical contact with Howard. At least Maria made Tony kiss her cheek before they left him the final time; the next time Tony made any kind of physical contact with Howard, his old man was in a casket. Apparently, it was a comparable situation with Barton. Both his parents died in a car accident, like Tony’s. Howard and Maria, as well as Harold and Edith, had joint funerals. Tony and Clint refused to cry for their fathers, but both fell apart over their mothers. No kid should have to plan funerals for their parents, certainly not at eight years old (or the emotional equivalent of an eight-year-old that represented Tony at the physical age of twenty), and Tony refused to let that happen to the Barton kids. 

When Laura sauntered into the office with Natasha, the baby tucked into a sling so Laura could use both her hands, Fury immediately stood and rolled the office chair to her. He might be a stone-faced emotionless bastard at times, but he was not without manners, and Laura Barton was probably the only person he would concede any kind of power to. If she could stay married to Clinton Francis Barton for eleven years, she was either fucking crazy or stronger than Fury ever would be, and that deserved respect. Thor also held a deep respect for women who bore children, something Frigga instilled in him. He was, after all, also the god of fertility at one point. Many children where ceremoniously dedicated to him throughout the centuries, though it had been years since a Midgardian did so. He found human infants fascinating: how did something so small manage to survive into adulthood? An Asgardian spent a relatively short amount of time as an infant compared to Midgardian ages, and Thor met Nathaniel when the toddler was at least able to crawl. The new baby could fit entirely in Thor’s palm.

There was a lull in the conversation, save for Tony and Bruce quietly muttering at each other in the middle of the room. Laura wasn’t sure if they were talking to each other, or just in the direction of one another, but whatever they were saying seemed to work for them. Occasionally Bruce leaned over Tony’s shoulder to read something, like the way Cooper and his buddies practically crawled on top of one another to look at Lego creations. Laura used the swivel of the chair to rock Allie back to sleep for a quick snooze before she would need to wake up and eat again, at least until the phone in her back pocket buzzed.

Nat helped Laura stand enough to retrieve the phone, then helped her sit back down. Laura only stared at the phone in confusion, as it was not indicating a regular phone call but a video call. “I don’t recognize this number,” she said, hesitating over the green ‘accept’ button. Tony grabbed his tablet and swiped across a few buttons to a new program, remaining on the floor.

“Might be a wrong number, I’ll record it and trace the call just in case.” 

Laura nodded and tapped the button. After a few seconds of nothing but a dark screen, a scraggly groan came through along with Clint’s beaten and emaciated face. If Laura were not married to him for more than a decade, she would not have recognized the face as Clint’s.

“Laura? Are you there?”

She didn’t know what to say or how to answer him. Ten minutes ago, she wondered if their daughter would ever see him again, and now Laura was on the phone with him. Or what was left of him. “Clint…” His face was so gaunt, his normally bright blue eyes dull and sunken into his sockets. Laura could tell he struggled just to keep his eyes open, and every few seconds Clint caught himself dozing off. Someone off-screen slapped his face or flicked him whenever Clint’s eyes began to lose focus. 

“Laura, they only gave me a few minutes. I just…I wanted to see you again.” Laura had to force herself not to bury her face in her hand and sob, keeping her focus entirely on her husband.

“Clint, where are you?”

“I don’t know, baby, I have no idea. It doesn’t matter, I just wanted you to know how much I love you. God, I love you so much, Laura, I don’t tell you enough—.” A sharp coughing fit interrupted him, hard enough to crack ribs if Laura could guess, and she sat there watching her husband violently cough up bloody mucus. If this were his last moments, Laura would stay on the phone with him until the very end. 

The coughing spell caused Clint to drop the phone, giving Laura a brief look at his surroundings. She could see a small window and the top of a billboard advertising either an auto repair shop or an auto dealer across the street. The walls of wherever Clint was held were caked in a mold of an assortment of colors. When Clint’s coughing subsided, a pair of thick hands wrapped almost entirely around his neck and hauled him back into a sitting position, telling him to get on with the call. Clint’s effort not to cough made him wheeze, the gunk coating his lungs audible through the phone with every breath. She could see the black necrotic skin that once covered the implants in Clint’s chest, which explained Tony’s inability to locate him based on their signals. The wires jut out of the black skin like morbid feathers, murky green pus leaking from the skin surrounding the wires. Everything about Clint screamed infection to Laura, and he needed antibiotics as soon as they found him. 

From the floor, Tony motioned for Laura to keep him talking. Whoever was with Barton did not need to know there was an audience, and the longer the call went the faster Tony could triangulate its source and at least narrow down a location. “Clint, I have Allie, do you want to see her?” Clint nodded at the phone, his face contorting into a pained smile. Laura pressed the button to flip the direction of the camera so she could angle the phone about Allie’s sleeping face tucked into the sling. Since Laura could still see Clint’s face from her perspective, she saw every emotion that ran across his face, watched him stroke the side of the phone as if he could stroke the baby’s face through it. Whatever he whispered at the phone, Laura couldn’t understand. Clint was most likely delirious, anyway. And since his limbs were spasming, that also meant there was swelling inside his brain. Laura guessed he only had a few hours before his body shut down.

The moment Tony gave her a thumbs-up and flipped his tablet around to show a map with a mile radius circle in the center, Laura finally wept. They found him. If anything, Laura at least would have a body to bury by the time they were able to get there.  
\---  
When they found him, after Natasha shot Gibs point-blank while holding him down by the throat with her foot and the Hulk ripped the steel door of the meat locker from its hinges, they also found the phone Clint used to call Laura. Even after the battery had long since died, he never let it go.


	11. And Take Me Home

For Tony, the rescue mission was surreal at best.  Either that or torture just wasn’t something the human mind could comprehend so it was easier for his brain to perceive everything as a dream.  Steve did not have some rousing speech to give, which Tony found almost as disconcerting as the circumstances that brought them to the middle of fucking nowhere Wyoming.

                As soon as the tablet at the farm gave them about two miles to work with, the team was tripping over each other to get out the door and into the Quinjet.  The phone Barton used to call Laura was a burner phone, unregistered to anyone but bought in Michigan a few weeks beforehand.  Tony was also able to extract the video feed from Laura’s phone; Barton dropping his phone and showing the top of the used auto dealer and repair shop’s main sign for about five seconds probably saved his life.  With that image, Tony and Vision could scour the internet for a more specific location.  The internet provided _two_ possible locations, both owned by one person hence the similarity in their signs.  Steve labeled them Location A and Location B--Natasha, Steve, Banner, and Tony took A, while Sam, Vision, Wanda, and Thor took B.  Typically, those who could fly stuck together but in this instance Tony and Vision separated so each team could have someone with scanning capabilities. 

                Since the Quinjet had speeds capable of Mach 2, they spent less than half an hour in the air before landing about half a mile outside Wamsutter, Wyoming.  Discretion was all but impossible if they landed a highly-modified aircraft in the middle of a town of only 500 people.  Most likely they would never know the reason whoever took Barton brought him to that specific location, especially after all three of the baddies were dead.  There were many details they would probably never know. 

                 On the ground, the two teams went their separate ways.  Banner struggled to keep up with everyone—not only was he the least physically fit while he was still Bruce, he was also fighting Hulk to keep him in check until they were at the correct place.  It was quickly becoming a losing battle, and whenever Bruce grunted and slowed down, Natasha looked back to see his skin a shade greener than before.  Becoming the Hulk was more physically demanding than becoming Banner; usually when he transformed back Bruce was so tired that he blacked out quickly, but whenever he became the Hulk he felt every bone, tendon, joint, and cartilage crack and shift.  _Subtlety_ was not exactly Hulk’s best quality.  Bruce didn’t have to wait much longer; as soon as Tony scanned the only building across the street from their designated auto shop, Tony barely even got the word “Hulk” out before the Big Guy smacked him out of the way to crash through the building.  The shock of being thrown to the ground mid-flight threw off Tony’s sensors for a few seconds until Friday’s voice crackled through the ear piece.

                _“Tried to warn you, boss._ ”

                “Thanks, Friday, I appreciate it.  Keep tabs on vital signs inside the building, see if you can figure out which one is Barton.”

                _“On it_.”   Friday only needed a few seconds to scan through the occupants, highlighting them on Tony’s HUD screen.  _“Barton’s in the small compartment, barely reading vital signs.”_   Two mini-maps appeared on the HUD, one showing a 2-D outline from above similar to blueprints and another as if Tony were looking through a window.  Friday’s highlights showed three red figures scrambling up and down the hallways trying to figure out what to do as a huge green Hulk outline slammed its fists against walls and threw debris in the red highlights’ directions.  Deep in the back was a blue-highlighted figure curled into a ball on the floor.

                Tony blasted a larger hole through the wall so the rest of the team could pile in at once instead of single file through the hole Hulk left in his destructive wake.  Whenever Hulk was in rampage-mode, it would take very little provocation for him to turn on his teammates, so Tony had to be careful with blowing things up near him.  The Big Guy was too busy ripping a steel door from its hinges and relieving one of the bad guys of his head to really care, which provided a smaller goon a distraction so he could slip through the doorframe and into the tiny room where Clint lay.

                Natasha and Steve paired up to follow him inside, Steve providing protection in front using his shield and Natasha behind him with her gun over his shoulder.  She reacted faster than she had time to form the word “gun” in her head, firing off a round into the right side of the man’s chest.  He dropped the gun and clawed at his chest as if doing so would stop his lung from filling with blood, until Nat shoved her boot into his throat to take a good look at him.  She recognized him, a whiny rookie agent that was equivalent to the class nerd before the fall of SHIELD, but couldn’t recall his name.  He also recognized her, croaking the word _Widow_ multiple times through bubbles of blood leaking from the side of his mouth.  Natasha’s facial expression did not change at all as she held her gun to the ex-agent’s forehead and fired a round through his skull.

                Steve’s gut reaction was to stop her, that he should be handed over to authorities, but everything happened too quickly for him to process.  He tried calling out her name, but the sound died out along with the sound of the gunshot.  There was no sound for five seconds or so as they absorbed what just happened.  Nat moved first, dropping next to Clint to check for vital signs.  The last thing she needed was to bring Laura a corpse. 

                The other group changed course as soon as they heard Hulk crash through the building, so they were not far behind.  No one said a word, the only sound coming from down the hall as Hulk used the steel door to pummel the remaining baddie into the ground.  It almost sounded like Hulk was having _fun,_ which would’ve sickened anyone else in the group if it were not for the equally fucked up circumstances happening down the hall.

                Tony’s tin mechanical voice echoed in the tiny room, a locker of some kind.  Not everyone could fit, but Sam and Wanda stood outside anyway due to the smell.  “Updates, Friday.”

                _“Extremely low heart rate, boss, I can barely detect it_.”  It was a good thing Friday could do the scan for him; Tony did not want to continue looking at the image of Barton on the ground.  He looked like a skeleton with yellowing skin stretched across his frame, lower legs swollen from being unable to move and bruises covering substantial portions of his body.  The bottom of Clint’s feet, upper legs, and backside were red and peeling from freezer burn, and bloody vomit covered half of Clint’s face.  Horror movies could not compare to what Tony was seeing, and he struggled not to throw up at the sight. 

                If the smell of rotting flesh and excrement bothered Natasha at all, she didn’t show it.  She slowly peeled open Clint’s eyelids, careful so that they would not scratch his corneas and potentially blind him.  Nat couldn’t tell if Clint recognized her or if he were even conscious.  She busted Clint out of torture situations in the past, extracted him with missing fingernails and burn marks on his wrists from being tied to something, but this was beyond torture.  There wasn’t a word in English or Russian to describe this.

                She stood and walked out of the locker quickly to stop herself from becoming upset.  “Thor,” she uttered, “wrap your cape around him and keep him warm.  We need Bruce.”  Thor reached behind his shoulders to unsnap the cape from the rest of his armor and, with a grim face, squeezed past the group and into the locker.  He stretched the cape across Clint’s torso starting at his knees and up to his shoulders.  It was all they had until they were back in the jet with more medical supplies, but it at least meant that Clint would no longer be entirely nude.

                Staring down the Hulk always had an element of danger, but Natasha was too upset to worry about that.  The Hulk lullaby made no sense to her whatsoever, the phrase held no significance or context, but Bruce told her once that the oddity of it grabbed Hulk’s attention.  Touching his wrist served as a grounding technique, pulling Hulk outside of his raging thoughts so he could focus on Natasha and Bruce could regain control.  “Hey, Big Guy,” Natasha barely whispered, her voice shaking.  “The sun’s getting real low.”  Hulk turned around and glared at her, the steel door dripping blood and chunks of someone’s skull onto Hulk’s shoulder.  He huffed once, torn between the need to keep smashing and Natasha.  “Please, Clint needs Banner.”

                Hulk roared at her when she mentioned Puny Banner.  Any other day that might have scared her at least somewhat, but right now she was too numb to feel much beyond sheer exhaustion.  Hulk growled once again, barring his teeth and huffing at Nat until he heard a yelp down the hall that distracted him.  He lumbered down the hall to the source of the noise, recognizing that it was Clint crying out in pain.  Most people assumed that the only emotion Hulk felt was anger, but anger encompassed many different emotions at once; Hulk was also surprisingly loyal, even when rampaging, so the thought of someone hurting a teammate set him off once again.  Thor stepped out of the locker holding Clint almost like a baby, trying his best not to hurt Clint.  The acid build-up in Clint’s joints and limbs from lack of proper movement or stretching made him moan.  Any other day Clint would be making some smart-ass comment about being Thor’s damsel in distress.  Today no one was sure if he were even lucid, at least more than enough to know he felt pain.

                Thor turned to the side to brace for the Hulk’s massive body to slam into him, but it never came.  Instead Hulk stopped directly in front of Thor, pulling the cape back so he could see Clint’s sallow face.  “Barton requires Banner’s medical knowledge, Hulk.”  The way Hulk tugged at the cape as gently as possible reminded Nat of a gorilla.

                The pause was enough for Banner to regain control (or Hulk willingly gave it over), and within a few seconds the change back to Bruce began.  Thor didn’t wait for the transformation to finish; he flew off with Clint held close to his chest.  The remaining flyers were not far behind, with Sam and Vision landing next.  Until Bruce arrived, the three could only help make Clint comfortable on the gurney tucked into the back of the jet.  Vision placed his hand on Clint’s forehead to do a simple body scan so they would not have to wait for Dr. Banner to set up any equipment.  By Vision’s judgment, Barton had mere _hours_ left.  As soon as Tony landed at the back of the jet with Banner, Vision helped carry him up the ramp and gave Banner status updates.

                “His heartrate is 47 beats per minute, body temperature 104.7,” Vision’s calm, but hurried, accent relayed.  Banner did not appear fully awake but snapped into alertness as soon as his feet hit the cold metallic floor of the jet.  Sam had Banner’s sweatshirt ready and occupied himself by firing up the jet.  As soon as the remaining team members were on board he would take off and switch out with Tony.  Bruce set up an IV and rifled through drawers for eye drops as the rest of the team removed equipment, Natasha camping on the other side of the gurney.  She tore open a gauze pack and wet it with hydrogen peroxide to gently scrub some of the gunk from Clint’s face. 

                As the IV slowly dripped through the tube, Clint’s heart rate increased to a less-dangerous level.  It still sounded weak when Bruce listened through the drum, but a heart rate in the 60s was less concerning than the low 40s.  The swelling in Clint’s legs also went down but they were still painfully red and puffy.  They only needed to keep him alive for about ninety minutes until they were back at a hospital in New York where SHIELD doctors could take over.  Natasha was afraid to look away from him, fearing that if she did so she would miss something important. 

                Thirty minutes into the flight, Clint attempted to open his eyes, panicking when the eye drops made his vision cloudy.  Clint was still far too weak to do much beyond squirm and try to clamp his eyes shut when someone tried to force them open.  When he felt thinner fingers on his face, he stopped and tried to blink the fluid away causing tears to leak from the sides of his eyes. 

                “Hey, hey, relax, you’re safe, shh.”  It was a soothing voice.  Not that of his wife, but he knew the speaker.  Nat.  “Calm down, just take deep breaths.  Wanda, what’s he thinking?”

                There was a pause, but Clint could feel a wave pass over his body.  “He’s just scared, the eye drops are making it difficult to see.  I can help him sleep, if that is what he needs.” 

A deeper voice came from Clint’s left, which caused him to jump.  “Let’s make sure he’s stable first, then let him fall asleep on his own.”  Bruce.  Clint knew that voice also.  When did Bruce come back?

                Natasha used another gauze pad to dab at the excess fluid around Clint’s eye.  She could see that Clint was at least trying to piece together information, which was promising.  Anytime he banged his head against something over the past year Natasha worried he would further damage his brain; God only knows what kind of damage the past week caused.

                She tucked her hand under Thor’s cape and held onto Clint’s, relaxing when he squeezed her fingers.  “Do you know who this is?”  Almost immediately she felt him squeeze her hand again.  “I have something to show you.  Wait here.”  As if he could really go anywhere, she internally mused.  Nat went to her small locker at the rear of the jet and looked through her belongings for her cellphone, which she used to take as many pictures as she could over the past few days.  She opened her phone and held it so Clint could see the pictures.  A few were of Nathaniel simply staring at the phone, unsure of what to do with it.  Others were the older kids making faces, one of Allie stretched out on their bed with her arms above her head, another with Laura holding Nate on one side of her lap and Allie in the other arm.  They all looked so happy, except for Laura.  Clint could tell when she was upset, even if Laura didn’t verbally say so.  Eventually Nat came to a video.

                It started with Lilah standing in the middle of their living room, Cooper gently rocking Allie on the sofa behind her.  Cooper pretended to nibble on her fingers whenever she squirmed enough to bring her fist to Cooper’s face.  Natasha’s voice came from off-screen.  _Okay, show daddy what we’ve been working on.  First position_.  Lilah hopped into the center of the room with her feet together at her heels.  _And second position._ Nat must’ve taught Lilah some basic ballet positions while Clint was gone.  Lilah would do just about anything Nat asked her to do, she loved her Auntie Nat.  _And pirouette_.  Lilah held her arms out like she held a bowl much too large for her, spinning in place.  After a few seconds, Nate toddled into frame with his juice cup in one hand, stopping to watch Lilah for a few seconds, then spinning in place with a huge grin on his face.  The phone shuffled from Natasha giggling at the little boy, stopping the video when Nate spun onto his backside. 

                Clint squeezed Natasha’s hand once again, blinking tears away that were not from the eye drops.  His babies were just fine, they were happy and healthy, and it looked like Nate was fully over whatever bug he had a few days ago.  That seemed like years to Clint, and he honestly wasn’t sure how long he’d been captured.  A week?  That didn’t feel right.  Did it?  He felt so tired, more tired than he realized now that he wasn’t in constant danger.  Under Loki’s spell he did not eat for about three days, but at least during that time he could drink water occasionally.  However long it’d been since he last had a full drink, and not licking moldy brown run-off from a crack in the wall, was the longest he’d gone without drinking.  Did the popsicle he helped Nate finish off count?  That felt like a century ago.

                The IV fluid made his entire body shiver, even though it was room-temperature.  The jacket he sat on in the storage locker was left behind, and Thor’s cape was only long enough to cover him from the shoulders down to his calves, not long enough to cover his feet.  Adding weight to his feet made them ache, which Clint did not understand in his current state of disequilibrium.  He wanted to move his neck and look around to see who else was in the jet, but Banner set his head in something that locked it into place.  The most he could see was a few feet ahead and whatever wandered into Clint’s peripheral vision. 

                Midway through the flight, Banner called ahead to the hospital to give some basic updates using medical jargon Clint vaguely recognized.  _Necrotic_.  _Sepsis._ At least he knew what “inflammation” meant.  Whatever those other words meant, Banner sounded worried.  Clint was more worried about staying awake so he wouldn’t die in his sleep.  He would be damned if his death certificate read “a nap” as the cause of death.


End file.
